The Grouès family first settled down in Sala Street, in the bourgeois neighbourhood of Ainay in Lyon before moving to one of the prosperous suburbs of the city, Irigny…
The Abbé Pierre becomes MP of Meurthe-et-Moselle: he wears the priestly cloth but doesn’t have the priestly speech. He will be re-elected twice (from 1945 to 1946 and from 1946 to 1951).
“The beauty of a city lies neither in its museums nor in its cathedrals… the beauty of a city is the absence of slums, the absence of homeless people.”
“The origin of everything was my meeting with Georges, a parricide assassin who wanted to commit suicide. I get called and I say to him: well then, before killing yourself, come help me!”
One day during the winter of 1956, a Minister, most likely annoyed by the Abbé Pierre's public addresses, declares in a national newspaper: “the poor of Abbé Pierre should go sleep under bridges!”
“To make a positive contribution to the search for adequate solutions to the housing needs, the Foundation Abbé Pierre for the Housing of the Underprivileged is created.”
The fight against exclusion: housing, a fundamental right
“The 21st century will either be brotherly or will not be. It’s up to each one of us, regardless of belief or thought, to make sure this certitude comes to life.”
This Friday January 20 at 5:30 pm, Philippe Torreton, one of the Foundations’s sponsors, read Abbé Pierre’s call – broadcasted on February 1, 1954 – on the Leopold Senghor footbridge, facing the Orsay museum in Paris.
Inauguration of the Abbé Pierre Centre in Esteville
On the morning of Saturday, January 21, the Abbé Pierre Centre in Esteville was inaugurated in the presence of numerous personalities as well as several donors of the Foundation, who made the trip to discover this place of remembrance and life.
Unveiling of Abbé Pierre’s statue at the Foundation Abbé Pierre’s headquarters in Paris.
In tribute to the 6th anniversary of its founder’s passing, the Foundation unveils this Tuesday January 22, at 11 o’clock, a full statue of Abbé Pierre.