Abbé Pierre

Henri Antoine Grouès was born into a wealthy silk-merchant family in Lyon. Renouncing his inheritance, he joined the Capuchin Franciscan order, distributing his wealth to the poor before poor health forced him to become a diocesan priest in 1938. During World War II, under the nom de guerre 'Abbé Pierre', he joined the French Resistance in the Vercors mountains, forging false papers to smuggle hundreds of Jews, political dissidents, and forced laborers across the Swiss border, and helping Charles de Gaulle's brother escape to safety.

Elected to the French National Assembly after the Liberation, Abbé Pierre used his deputy salary to purchase a dilapidated house in Neuilly-Plaisance in 1949. There, together with a former convict named Georges, he founded Emmaüs, an innovative community where homeless men ('ragpickers') restored furniture and recycled scrap to support themselves while sheltering destitute families.

On 1 February 1954, with temperatures in Paris plunging to -15°C and people freezing to death on the streets, Abbé Pierre marched into Radio Luxembourg and delivered his historic broadcast: 'My friends, come help... A woman has frozen to death tonight on the boulevard Sebastopol, holding the eviction notice which had expelled her from her home.' The broadcast sparked the 'Insurrection of Goodness' (l'insurrection de la bonté), raising 500 million francs and compelling parliament to build 12,000 emergency housing units. The Emmaus movement expanded into an international confederation operating in over forty countries.