Father Gheddo remembers the Abbé Pierre
Rome (AsiaNews) – With the death of the Abbé Pierre, who passed away yesterday at the age of 94, one of the best known and most loved iconic examples of Christian charity is gone. Founder of his first ‘Emmaus’ shelter for the homeless in Paris in 1949, the Abbé's persona will be forever linked to all those groups and communities that bear that same name. In France alone there are 191 Emmaus groups. Another 421 operate across Europe, the Americas and Africa as well as in Asia (Philippines, India, Bangladesh, Thailand and Japan), spreading rapidly in the latter. And requests have been made to set up similar communities in Oceania.
As a priest the Abbé Pierre devoted his life entirely to helping the poorest, the most marginalised, those whom society had rejected. In the aftermath of the Second World War (in which he took part as a member of the French resistance), he went beyond political and social activism to get the French state to adopt policies of justice and social assistance for the poor, but instead tried to raise the “social consciousness” of his fellow Frenchmen so that they would join Emmaus groups in pursuing concrete actions.
When he launched his first national “Insurrection of Kindness” campaign in 1954, the response was immediate. This gave him an opportunity to broaden the scope of his action and accentuate its Evangelical content not only within Emmaus groups but also among the broader movement in public opinion that he was creating.
In 1963, when we founded ‘Mani Tese’ [Outstretched Hands] in Milan as an association in support of missionaries and their work in favoir of the poor, two missionaries from PIME (Pontifical Institute for Foreign Missions) went to Paris and invited the Abbé to visit.
He came to Milan in one of his first visits to Italy and spoke at different venues as well as on radio and television. In his speeches and statements he highlighted the fundamental reasons behind the ongoing campaigns against world hunger, campaigns which were particularly active in Italy at that time, involving also lay people in schools, companies, newspapers, and various associations. His focus on Christian charity was based on the principles of ‘Loving Thy Neighbour,’ of redistributive justice in favour of those who have less than us, of giving up the unnecessary so that everyone could have the necessary, and finally of “not only giving, but of giving and receiving” from the poor the human values of which they are witness. On that occasion he launched the slogan “Bringing happiness to others is our happiness”.
He repeatedly told the board of directors of ‘Mani Tese’, five lay people and two missionaries, to “remain faithful to the spirit of the foundation and to the missionaries who are the privileged bridges to bring help to and engage in cultural exchange with the poor nations”. At that time, when the fight against world hunger largely meant eliciting emotional responses [in people] to raise money, the Abbé’s ideas were something fresh and new because they shifted the focus.
In 1996 the Abbé caused controversy when he endorsed a book by a friend, Roger Garaudy (a convert to Islam), who denied the Holocaust and argued against the existence of Israel.
In 2004 he was again in the world’s spotlight when he published 'My God, Why?', a book in which he argued for married and women priests and gay marriage. But all these “loose words” (which he spoke in his 90s) have not reduced the veneration people feel for him both within the Church and among believers. His example as someone who gave himself totally to the poor remains the same despite his critical spirit which often put him at odds with others.
I believe the Abbé Pierre, his writings and speeches as well his communities’ spirit should be studied and the lessons drawn from them should spread everywhere because the Gospels and the spiritual and cultural motivations that push us to fight “the only possible war, that against hunger and destitution” are always relevant.
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23/08/2005
