He was twelve when he met François Chabbey and went for the first time with his father to an Order circle, the brotherhood of the "Hospitaliers veilleurs" in which the mainly middle-class members would serve the poor by providing barber services.

[3] The theologian Henri de Lubac told him on the day of his priestly ordination: "Ask the Holy Spirit to grant you the same anti-clericalism of the saints".

[9] He was arrested twice, once in 1944 by the Nazi police in the town of Cambo-les-Bains in the Pyrénées-Atlantiques, but was quickly released and travelled to Spain then Gibraltar before joining the Free French Forces of General de Gaulle in Algeria.

[citation needed] When the war was over, following de Gaulle's entourage's advice and the approbation of the archbishop of Paris, Abbé Pierre was elected deputy for Meurthe-et-Moselle department in both National Constituent Assemblies in 1945–1946 as an independent close to the Popular Republican Movement (MRP), mainly consisting of Christian democratic members of the Resistance.

He then joined the Christian socialist movement named Ligue de la jeune République, created in 1912 by Marc Sangnier, but decided to finally end his political career.

Thus, when the decolonization movement was slowly beginning to emerge in the whole world, he attempted in 1956 to convince Tunisian leader Habib Bourguiba to obtain independence without using violence.

[citation needed] Abbé Pierre was then called to India in 1971 by Jayaprakash Narayan to represent, along with the Ligue des droits de l'homme (Human Rights League) France in the issues of refugees.

Following the failure of the projected law on lodgings, he gave a well-remembered speech on Radio Luxembourg on 1 February 1954, and asked Le Figaro, a conservative newspaper, to publish his call, in which he stated soberly that "a woman froze to death tonight at 3:00 AM, on the pavement of Sebastopol Boulevard, clutching the eviction notice which the day before had made her homeless".

He went on to describe the drama of homeless life, claiming that in "every town in France, in every quarter of Paris" ministry was needed based on "these simple words: 'If you suffer, whoever you are, enter, eat, sleep, recover hope, here you are loved'".

This enormous amount was totally unexpected; telephone operators and the postal service were overwhelmed, and owing to the volume of donations, several weeks were needed just to sort them, distribute them, and find a place to stock them throughout the country.

Grouès traveled to Beyrouth (Beirut, Lebanon) in 1959, to assist in the creation of the first multiconfessional Emmaus group there; it was founded by a Sunni (Muslim), a Melkite (Catholic) archbishop and a Maronite (Christian) writer.

[citation needed] In 1983, he spoke with Italian President Sandro Pertini to plead the cause of Vanni Mulinaris, imprisoned on charge of assistance to the Red Brigades (BR), and even observed eight days of hunger strike from 26 May to 3 June 1984 in the Cathedral of Turin to protest against detention conditions of "Brigadists" in Italian prisons and the imprisonment without trial of Vanni Mulinaris, who was recognized innocent sometimes afterwards.

[15] According to the Corriere della Sera, it would even have been him who convinced then president François Mitterrand to grant protection from extradition to left-wing Italian activists who took refuge in France and had broken with their past.

[18] Following Grouès' death in January 2007, Italian magistrate Carlo Mastelloni declared to the Corriere della Sera that during the abduction of Aldo Moro Abbé Pierre had gone to the Christian Democrats' headquarters in Rome in an attempt to speak with its secretary Benigno Zaccagnini, in favor of a "hard line" of refusal of negotiations along with the BR.

In 1995, after a three-year-long siege of Sarajevo, he went there to exhort nations of the world to put an end to the violence, and requested French military operation against the Serb positions in Bosnia.

But Garaudy provoked public indignation when he announced in March that he was supported by the Abbé Pierre, who was immediately excluded from the honour committee of the LICRA (International League against Racism and Anti-Semitism).

The Abbé condemned those who tried to "negate, banalize or falsify the Shoah", but his continued support to Garaudy as a friend was criticized by all anti-racist, Jewish organisations (MRAP, CRIF, Anti-Defamation League, etc.)

[20] His friend Bernard Kouchner, co-founder of Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF), criticized him for "absolving the intolerable,[21]" while Cardinal Jean-Marie Lustiger (and archbishop of Paris from 1981 to 2005) publicly disavowed him.

[clarification needed] He maintained a relationship with the progressive French Catholic Bishop Jacques Gaillot, to which he recalled his duty of "instinct of a measured insolence".

[13] He did not like Mother Teresa; despite her work for the poor, her strict adherence to Catholic teaching on morality did not sit well with Abbé Pierre's left wing ideology.

Father Lombardi, spokesman of the Vatican, pointed journalists to the statement made by the French Church, while Benedict XVI did mention his death in private audiences.

By way of comfort and hope, His Holiness sends you a heartfelt apostolic blessing, which he extends to the family of the departed, to members of the communities of Emmaus, and to everyone gathering for the funeral".

[26][27] Despite very strong grassroots opposition to adoption by same-sex couples, Abbé Pierre dismissed people's concerns that it deprives children of a mother or father and turns them into objects.

The second report led the Abbé Pierre Foundation being retitled, and Emmaus France voting on removing the priest's name from its logo.

The Abbé Pierre Centre in Esteville in Normandy, where he lived for many years and is buried, was to close, and the disposal of hundreds of statuettes, busts and other images of the charity's creator was discussed.

[2] After homage by dignitaries, several hundred ordinary Parisians (among them professor Albert Jacquard, who worked with the abbé for the cause of homelessness) went to the Val-de-Grâce chapel to pay their respects.

[41] His funeral on 26 January 2007 at the Cathedral of Notre Dame de Paris was attended by numerous dignitaries: President Jacques Chirac, former President Valéry Giscard d'Estaing, Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin, many French Ministers, and the Companions of Emmaus, who were seated in the cathedral's first rows according to Abbé Pierre's last wishes.

All profits from authors' rights (books, discs and videos) go to the Fondation Abbé Pierre which supports homeless and hungry people.