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Abbé Pierre
Abbé Pierre GOQ (born Henri Marie Joseph Grouès; 5 August 1912 – 22 January 2007) was a French Catholic priest. He was a member of the Resistance during World War II and deputy of the Popular Republican Movement. In 1949, he founded the Emmaus movement, with the goal of helping poor and homeless people. For several decades, he was one of the most popular public figures in France. Allegations of sexual abuse of at least 57 women, as well as several underage girls, emerged in 2024 and 2025.
Grouès was born on 5 August 1912 in Lyon, France to a wealthy Catholic family of silk traders, the fifth of eight children. The writer and murderer Héra Mirtel was one of his aunts. He spent his childhood in Irigny, near Lyon. He was twelve when he met François Chabbey and went for the first time with his father to an Order circle, the brotherhood of the "Hospitaliers veilleurs" in which the mainly middle-class members would serve the poor by providing barber services.[citation needed]
Grouès became a member of the Scouts de France in which he was nicknamed "Meditative Beaver" (Castor méditatif). In 1928, aged 16, he made the decision to join a monastic order, but he had to wait until he was seventeen and a half to fulfill this ambition. In 1931, Grouès entered the Capuchin Order, renouncing his inheritance and offering all his possessions to charity.[citation needed]
Known as frère Philippe (Brother Philippe), he entered the monastery of Crest in 1932, where he lived for seven years and was ordained a priest on 24 August 1938. He had to leave in 1939 after developing severe lung infections, which made monastic life difficult to cope with. He became chaplain to the sick at several places and then was nominated as curate of Grenoble's cathedral in April 1939, only a few months before the invasion of Poland.
The theologian Henri de Lubac told him on the day of his priestly ordination: "Ask the Holy Spirit to grant you the same anti-clericalism of the saints".
When World War II broke out in 1939, he was mobilised as a non-commissioned officer in the train transport corps. According to his official biography, he helped Jewish people to escape Nazi persecution following the July 1942 mass arrests in Paris, called the Rafle du Vel' d'Hiv, and another raid in the area of Grenoble in the non-occupied zone: "In July 1942, two fleeing Jews asked him for help. Having discovered the persecution taking place, he immediately went to learn how to make false passports. Starting in August 1942, he guided Jewish people to Switzerland".
His pseudonym dates from his work with the French Resistance during the Second World War, when he operated under several different names. Based in Grenoble, an important center of the Resistance, he helped Jews and politically persecuted escape to Switzerland. In 1942, he assisted Jacques de Gaulle (the brother of Charles de Gaulle) and his wife escape to Switzerland.
He participated in establishing a section of the maquis where he officially became one of the local leaders in the Vercors Plateau and in the Chartreuse Mountains. He helped people to avoid being taken into the Service du travail obligatoire (STO), the Nazi forced-labour program agreed upon with Pierre Laval, by creating in Grenoble the first refuge for resistants to the STO; he founded the clandestine newspaper L'Union patriotique indépendante. For a time, in 1943, he was given shelter by Lucie Coutaz, a Resistance member who later became his secretary and was his assistant in his charity work until her death in 1982.
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Abbé Pierre
Abbé Pierre GOQ (born Henri Marie Joseph Grouès; 5 August 1912 – 22 January 2007) was a French Catholic priest. He was a member of the Resistance during World War II and deputy of the Popular Republican Movement. In 1949, he founded the Emmaus movement, with the goal of helping poor and homeless people. For several decades, he was one of the most popular public figures in France. Allegations of sexual abuse of at least 57 women, as well as several underage girls, emerged in 2024 and 2025.
Grouès was born on 5 August 1912 in Lyon, France to a wealthy Catholic family of silk traders, the fifth of eight children. The writer and murderer Héra Mirtel was one of his aunts. He spent his childhood in Irigny, near Lyon. He was twelve when he met François Chabbey and went for the first time with his father to an Order circle, the brotherhood of the "Hospitaliers veilleurs" in which the mainly middle-class members would serve the poor by providing barber services.[citation needed]
Grouès became a member of the Scouts de France in which he was nicknamed "Meditative Beaver" (Castor méditatif). In 1928, aged 16, he made the decision to join a monastic order, but he had to wait until he was seventeen and a half to fulfill this ambition. In 1931, Grouès entered the Capuchin Order, renouncing his inheritance and offering all his possessions to charity.[citation needed]
Known as frère Philippe (Brother Philippe), he entered the monastery of Crest in 1932, where he lived for seven years and was ordained a priest on 24 August 1938. He had to leave in 1939 after developing severe lung infections, which made monastic life difficult to cope with. He became chaplain to the sick at several places and then was nominated as curate of Grenoble's cathedral in April 1939, only a few months before the invasion of Poland.
The theologian Henri de Lubac told him on the day of his priestly ordination: "Ask the Holy Spirit to grant you the same anti-clericalism of the saints".
When World War II broke out in 1939, he was mobilised as a non-commissioned officer in the train transport corps. According to his official biography, he helped Jewish people to escape Nazi persecution following the July 1942 mass arrests in Paris, called the Rafle du Vel' d'Hiv, and another raid in the area of Grenoble in the non-occupied zone: "In July 1942, two fleeing Jews asked him for help. Having discovered the persecution taking place, he immediately went to learn how to make false passports. Starting in August 1942, he guided Jewish people to Switzerland".
His pseudonym dates from his work with the French Resistance during the Second World War, when he operated under several different names. Based in Grenoble, an important center of the Resistance, he helped Jews and politically persecuted escape to Switzerland. In 1942, he assisted Jacques de Gaulle (the brother of Charles de Gaulle) and his wife escape to Switzerland.
He participated in establishing a section of the maquis where he officially became one of the local leaders in the Vercors Plateau and in the Chartreuse Mountains. He helped people to avoid being taken into the Service du travail obligatoire (STO), the Nazi forced-labour program agreed upon with Pierre Laval, by creating in Grenoble the first refuge for resistants to the STO; he founded the clandestine newspaper L'Union patriotique indépendante. For a time, in 1943, he was given shelter by Lucie Coutaz, a Resistance member who later became his secretary and was his assistant in his charity work until her death in 1982.