Journalists Marie-France Etchegoin and Laetitia Cherel, authors of “Abbe Pierre, the Making of a Saint”, assert, with supporting records, that the Vatican was aware of Abbé Pierre’s conduct as early as 1955.

Abbe Pierre, a significant pioneer in France’s struggle against poverty, faced severe charges in July 2024.

Emmaüs International and the Abbé Pierre Foundation commissioned a study which gathered the experiences of seven women who claimed to have been victims of his inappropriate behaviour between the late 1970s and 2005.

These stories detail improper gestures, coerced kisses, and more serious sexual assaults, including forced masturbation or fellatio. At least three of the claimed victims were children when the incidents occurred.

These discoveries have generated significant disruption among the organisations founded by Abbé Pierre. In February, the Paris prosecutor’s office declared that it would be unable to commence criminal procedures against Abbé Pierre due to the statute of limitations and the person’s death in 2007.

In mid-January, the Catholic Church urged the courts to look into the potential of an inquiry, sending a complaint “for failure to report rape and sexual assault on vulnerable people and minors”.

According to Le Monde, in a letter dated January 24, “the Paris prosecutor’s office announced that public action was extinguished by the death of the accused in 2007, as far as he was personally concerned, and prescribed as far as any failure to report facts could have possibly concerned.”

According to an investigative book published this Thursday, April 17, based on Holy See archives, “From the autumn of 1955, not only the French high clergy knew the dark side and the dangerousness of Abbé Pierre, but also the Holy See,” affirm journalists Marie-France Etchegoin and Laetitia Cherel in “Abbé Pierre, the making of a saint,” published by Allary.

As the editors of Le Parisien put it, “They report a ‘judicial procedure, initiated by the organ of the Roman Curia responsible for monitoring the morals and faith of the members of the Church, the Holy Office’, which was ‘slowed down by the bishops in France, quickly closed and buried two years later, in 1957′” .

The authors relied on the archives of the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith, which they studied in March 2025. In this book, we read, among other things, the report of a plenary meeting of the Supreme Congregation of the Holy Office on the issue of Abbé Pierre held on March 18, 1957.

The writers of this ten-page document revealed “the chronology of Abbé Pierre’s sexual activities from 1955 to 1957”, as well as “alert letters from the American and Canadian cardinals in 1955 and decisions of the Holy Office”.

Following these revelations, the French Bishops’ Conference (CEF) indicated that “The elements brought to light are serious and deserve to be explored further .” And to indicate, as reported by AFP, that it would “approach” the Vatican in order to “shed light” on these new elements, of which it assures that it “was not aware”.

In its press release, the CEF added that it is “a good thing that the truth can be made known, and that is why the CEF opened the archives of the National Centre for Archives of the Church of France (CNAEF) in September 2024 and asked the Holy See to investigate its archives .”

Finally, the CEF determined that “the elements brought to light are serious and deserve to be explored further to understand what happened and what the behavior of the French bishops was”, who were then in charge.