France spent all of last week united in mourning for the revered Abbe Pierre, a lifelong campaigner for the homeless and the poor, but divided over who the frail old man in a beret really was.No sooner was his death announced last Monday than politicians, anti-poverty activists and the media intoned a unanimous chorus of praise for the crusader who shamed successive governments into helping people they often ignored.
Tributes to him on television showed him organizing shelters for the homeless, lobbying presidents and prime ministers and blocking police from driving squatters out of an old building.
By Friday, Paris Archbishop Andre Vingt-Trois felt he had to remind mourners in Notre Dame Cathedral of a key fact many commentators overlooked about one of France's most revered men.
"Abbe Pierre was a Catholic priest," Vingt-Trois reminded everyone as he started the funeral mass. To stress the point, priestly vestments were draped over his coffin, already covered with his trademark black cloak and Legion of Honor medal.
The tug-of-war over Abbe Pierre's legacy brought to the surface an underlying tension between France's long and rich Christian heritage and its modern and very secular society.
Once called "the eldest daughter of the Church," France has separated church and state so rigorously over the past century that religion has been relegated mostly to the private sphere.
Hostility toward religion in public life is so widespread that believing politicians avoid mentioning their faith and Catholic priests often swap their Roman collars for ties in public.
Hostility toward religion in public life is so widespread that believing politicians avoid mentioning their faith and Catholic priests often swap their Roman collars for ties in public.
A recent survey showed that only 51 percent of the French still call themselves Catholic and only eight percent attended Sunday mass regularly. Of those Catholics, only half of them actually believe that God exists.
And yet Abbe Pierre, a modern-day Saint Francis of Assisi active until near the end of his 94 years, topped the popularity polls in France so regularly that he finally asked to be taken off the polling list in 2004 "to make space for the others."
APPARENT PARADOX
The apparent paradox of his popularity sparked daily debates in the media as the French tried to explain to themselves why they admired a crusading priest so much.
The apparent paradox of his popularity sparked daily debates in the media as the French tried to explain to themselves why they admired a crusading priest so much.
The unanimous admiration for Abbe Pierre -- "abbe" means abbott and he took the name in the wartime resistance -- "reflects the good and the bad conscience of the French," philosopher Edgar Morin said in one radio interview."On the good side, he represented the best France has to offer, so everyone saw himself in this. On the bad side, he showed us what we should have done but didn't."
Historian Max Gallo said the life of Abbe Pierre, who was born as Henri Groues into a wealthy Lyon family but renounced riches to become a priest and help the poor, "shows the force of the Christian tradition" in France.
But while his inspiration was Christian, he never wore that on his sleeve when campaigning for what were political goals such as housing and work for the poor, more secularly minded commentators responded.
"He was a Christian whose only theology was charity, so he was a secularized Christian," said philosopher Yves Michaud.
"secularized Christian values make up the majority," journalist Jacques Julliard noted on LCI television.
At the funeral, where President Jacques Chirac and his cabinet ministers rubbed shoulders with homeless men and volunteers of Abbe Pierre's Emmaus help-for-the-homeless movement, Archbishop Vingt-Trois stressed the priest's lifelong loyalty to his Church.
But Jean-Marie Colombani, publisher of the daily Le Monde, said Abbe Pierre's disputes with the hierarchy probably helped make him so popular with the French.
"He was a modern Catholic who was open to the ordination of women priests and married men... open to gay marriage and adoption rights for homosexuals," he wrote.
"He will remain one of the very rare great figures of French Catholicism of the 20th century."
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Disclaimer
No responsibility or liability shall attach itself to either myself or to the blogspot ‘Clerical Whispers’ for any or all of the articles placed here.
The placing of an article hereupon does not necessarily imply that I agree or accept the contents of the article as being necessarily factual in theology, dogma or otherwise.
Sotto Voce