1937. Henri Antoine Grouès is dismissed from the Capuchin friary of Crest because he is considered too frail for the hard monastic life. Seventy years later, under the name Abbé Pierre, he would die at the age of 94 (he was born in 1912) after surviving a thousand vicissitudes (including a shipwreck) and having founded and spread throughout the world the network of Emmaus communities, created to welcome the neglected people on earth. The name by which he became known was given to him (to protect him from German soldiers who had him in their sights as a partisan) by Lucie Coutaz, who for 40 years would work and live alongside him, his right-hand woman and confidant. |
