Abbe Pierre; Drew Attention to Poor, Homeless

Abbe Pierre, 94, the French priest who became an internationally revered activist for the poor and homeless for more than five decades, died of a lung infection Jan. 22 at Val de Grace military hospital in Paris.

Known as the "prophet of the poor," Abbe Pierre was elevated by many French to an icon of national conscience: a homegrown Mother Teresa. He abandoned the comfort of his early years -- his father was a Lyon silk merchant -- for a monastic life in the 1930s. During World War II, he was a highly decorated member of the resistance against the German occupation.

In 1949, he started his Emmaus Society, an anti-poverty crusade he named after the biblical village where Jesus was said to have been sheltered after his resurrection. Early on, the scraggly bearded priest wandered Paris in worn-down sandals and asked for old furniture and other bric-a-brac that his followers -- former convicts, war veterans, the despondent -- could resell. The organization grew into a movement of health and social service centers worldwide.

The Emmaus Society first gained widespread publicity in 1954 when Abbe Pierre made an emotional plea on French radio after a brutal cold front left nearly 100 people dead. "Friends! Help!" he began his address. "A woman died frozen at 3 a.m. last night on the pavement of the Boulevard de Sebastopol clutching the paper by which, the day before yesterday, she was evicted."

He raced to another studio beaming to Luxembourg and told them, "Look, French radio has just run this. If you don't want to be scooped, give me the microphone right away." He also went on a French radio quiz show, where he made another appeal for helping the needy.

The result was an enormous flow of goodwill. People donated heaters, blankets, overcoats, furniture and money. Charlie Chaplin signed over to Abbe Pierre a $5,700 gift from a Communist-supported peace organization.

The French government, which had just denied funding for postwar emergency housing, reversed itself and agreed to build 12,000 homeless shelters. The police took in vagrants for the night and released them without a hassle. The army handed out blankets.

This mobilization led to a biography of Abbe Pierre and a French film about the Emmaus movement. He was invited to meet with presidents and premiers, including Dwight D. Eisenhower and Jawaharlal Nehru of India.

He advised King Mohammed V of Morocco not to destroy the slums of Casablanca without addressing the roots of economic disparity in the countryside.

"If we build acceptable housing in cities to replace the slums, we will double the harm to your society," he said. "That's because the most daring of rural youth will hurry to come to the cities. And we would deprive the inland population of those capable of being natural leaders due to their personality. We would make those destined to be the foremost in their villages the poorest of the city."

Henri Antoine Groues was born Aug. 5, 1912, in Lyon, the fifth of eight children. He was educated in Jesuit schools, and a trip to Assisi convinced him that the priesthood was his calling.

He entered a Capuchin seminary in 1931 and gave his entire inheritance to the poor. A few years later, tiring of monastic life, he was reassigned to curate the St. Joseph Basilica in Grenoble, in southeastern France. There, he became involved in the French Resistance and took the name Abbe Pierre as a nom de guerre.