The Quiet Miracle of Emmaus

At Abbe Pierre's communes, old junk leads to new lives

It is the day after Easter at a commune near Orleans, France. Inside a warehouse, an altar has been set up on a kitchen table. Surrounding it are a coat rack jammed with secondhand clothing, rows of used appliances and abandoned furniture, and assorted bric-a-brac. All in all, an appropriate setting for the annual get-together of the "Emmaus movement," which has shown thousands of people in 23 countries around the world how to rebuild their self-esteem by recycling the junk of the consumer society.

Suddenly an old woman says, "He's here," and in strides a thin, bearded priest wearing the black beret and the worn, ill-fitting country cleric's suit that are his trademarks. The priest laughs and shakes hands with everyone. After he celebrates Mass, with a loaf of bread fetched hurriedly from the kitchen, there is a steak-and-rice lunch for 200. Wealthy bankers are squeezed in at the tables next to ex-convicts and recovered alcoholics.

The priest is the Rev. Henri de Groues, 65, known universally as Abbe Pierre. The only visible indication that he is no ordinary priest is a thin red ribbon of the Legion of Honor stitched on his jacket. But he is the man who, as a former law professor at the Orleans lunch put it, "almost singlehanded mobilized the entire government and people of France to do something for the poor."

The son of a wealthy silk manufacturer in Lyon, young Henri could have chosen a life of comfort. Instead, he gave his patrimony to charity and took the vows of the Capuchin order. In 1938, when his health broke after eight years in the monastery at Crest, he moved to a parish in Grenoble. Eventually, he became a leader of the anti-Nazi Resistance in eastern France, using many aliases including the one that stuck: Abbe Pierre. Among other exploits, he carried Charles de Gaulle's ailing brother Jacques across the frontier to safety in Switzerland. Later he himself was smuggled into Algeria in a mail sack, carrying a plea for arms intended for Churchill.

After the war, Abbe Pierre was elected a deputy in the National Assembly. He began renovating a large, ramshackle house in the Paris suburb of Neuilly-Plaisance as a hostel for needy people. Soon ex-cons, destitute families and vagrants joined him, and the abbe and his growing family of followers started building new residences nearby, using salvaged materials. He called his commune Emmaus, after the New Testament town (Luke 24:13-32) where two disciples, despondent after the Crucifixion, met the risen Christ and were filled with new hope. As it happened, the Emmaus movement was to grow out of personal travail.

That came in 1951, when the abbe lost his assembly seat and with it his only income. But just when the commune seemed imperiled, a chiffonier (ragpicker) at Emmaus devised a new source of money: he taught his colleagues how to rummage through trash for useful objects. Scrap paper was sold, broken furniture and appliances were repaired and marketed. The commune became self-supporting and earned enough to add new centers elsewhere. A credo evolved: "Give instant help to those nearest and in need. Show them how to help themselves. Afterward let them help others."

The abbe became known throughout France during the harsh winter of 1954, when he waged a one-man battle to force the government to provide emergency housing for the poor. So great was the public response that the Premier, Joseph Laniel, later said he half-suspected the abbe was planning a revolution and might have succeeded had he tried.

Today Abbe Pierre lives quietly in one of the 8,000 low-rent apartments that his organization has built in the Paris area. Though the movement runs summer camps and ships supplies and cash to 32 countries, the main focus remains self-sustaining communes. Besides the 52 in France (membership 1,500), there are 100 abroad. While the communes are secular, there is a heavy emphasis on community. The communards get room, board and a stipend, but their main reward is in self-respect. A sign in the Orleans commune reads: "We will never agree to accept our subsistence on any basis other than our own work."

The ancient monasteries disappeared, Abbe Pierre believes, because they became too prosperous and insensitive, and he fears the same thing will happen to his movement. To prevent this he uses every opportunity to expound his philosophy, and last week's celebration at Orleans was no exception. "The next friend who will come to this commune is somewhere right now," he told his followers. "We know nothing about him, but he exists at this very minute. While we are here and happy, he is crying somewhere in pain. When he comes to us here he will not find a paradise but he will find the time to heal himself. That is why we must go on."

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