Since the start of the crisis caused by the revelations of sexual violence committed by Abbé Pierre, the leadership of the Emmaus movement has been bunkered down in heavy silence. His relatives and confidants, those from the 90s and 2000s, such as his last private secretary Laurent Desmart, his former confessor Jean-Marie Viennet or even the former president of Emmaüs France Antoine Sueur, affirm, as one man, not not having been aware of the turpitudes of the religious. “Given the magnitude of the facts and their period, we have no doubt: the facts could not have been completely hidden from start to finish. On the other hand, we don’t know who knew, who knew what and what their place was in the organization. To date, we have no trace of an official questioning of the authorities of the movement», declared again, on October 9 to the Catholic weekly The PilgrimAdrien Chaboche, director of Emmaüs International. Several archival documents consulted by Liberation However, they attest that the management of Emmaüs was aware at the end of the 1950s of the facts alleged against its founder.
“Accidents to come and perhaps scandals”
Following scandals, a major crisis broke out, in fact, during the year 1957. It resulted in the internment, in a very chic psychiatric clinic in Switzerland, of Abbé Pierre, his exclusion from the management of Emmaus and control by proxies of his bank account and his personal mail. The association’s governing bodies, its central council, manage jointly with the Catholic Church the consequences of these drastic decisions. “We are all (when I say all, I mean all the leaders and members of the Emmaüs association up to the committed provincial friends or the religious advisors that we were able to consult) to consider as impossible the return to a situation similar to the one we have experienced for several months,” wrote, in a letter addressed to Abbé Pierre on December 27, 1957, Yves Goussault, endorsing the sidelining of the founder. This intellectual, a sociologist by trade, invested in development issues, is one of the first companions of Abbé Pierre, one of the notable personalities, at that time, in the movement.
It was Goussault himself, as he told the priest, who was responsible for transmitting to his faithful secretary Lucie Coutaz, who knew him in the Resistance, the information on the sexual violence committed by the Abbot Pierre. “On the plan of the Emmaus council […] only Miss Coutaz remained on the sidelines, but this was due to the fact that she was totally unaware of the events: I was able to speak at length with her on several occasions», Describes Goussault. In this same letter, the member of the Emmaus management makes several allusions, without elaborating on the question, to the scandal caused by the conduct of Abbé Pierre. He thus mentions “the risk we took.” Goussault also mentions that he “received multiple confidences for months” and that it is him “impossible to remain complicit in such a situation.” He even fears being “responsible for future accidents and perhaps scandals.”
On the Emmaüs Council, Goussault was not the only one to be aware of what caused the major crisis of 1957-1958 and to participate directly in its management. At the start of his internment in Prangins, Abbot Pierre endorsed, on December 30, a protocol which established the terms of his existence for the months to come. He is thus prohibited from “return to your usual surroundings in Paris without the formal advice of your attending physician» and the latter is the only one to decide on “activities that Abbé Pierre may engage in“. Several personalities countersigned the document that Liberation was able to obtain. Among them is Georges Lilaz, the director of the BHV who was one of the first patrons of the movement and member of its central council. He himself also distanced himself from Emmaüs at the end of the 1950s.
“A return to the old chaos”
The strategy of sidelining Abbé Pierre quickly ended in failure. After a few months, the founder of Emmaüs will question the Prangins protocol, reconstitute his secretariat in Switzerland thanks to the help of Lucie Coutaz and change doctors. This turnaround greatly worries Yves Goussault about the very future of Emmaüs. In a confidential note, dated September 20, 1958 addressed to the Council of the movement that Liberation was able to obtain exclusively, he denounces the risk of “a return to the old chaos“. He calls into question the troubled role of Lucie Coutaz who was ultimately removed from management because “she refused to recognize the facts with which we were brutally confronted.» «To those who came to see her, she never stopped to repeat, adds Goussault, that there was only slander and maneuvering and that everything would quickly resume under the direction of “the only leader willed by God”. We showed patience and tried everything.”
Has this important episode in the life of Emmaus simply sunk into oblivion, justifying the attitude of current leaders? In the movement, the affair does not seem completely unknown. In an internal letter that Liberation was able to consult, a former manager of Emmaüs spoke out, on August 6, 2024, against those who contested the accusations made against Abbé Pierre. “For my partshe writes, I knew since the beginning of the 2010s that the first facts date back to 1957, or even before.»
