Pierre Lunel, writer, is the author of several books on Abbé Pierre, including the latest L'abbé Pierre intime, published by Plon in April 2023.
For some time, the State, which holds the keys to the Pantheon, has just opened the door to our French heroines, Simone Veil, Geneviève de Gaulle, Joséphine Baker and Gisèle Halimi... It's amazing and deeply justified. All are great ladies who deserve to be there. The host of the Élysée would be well advised to extend his effort by responding to a wish of the French: To make room for our saint, our French hero: Abbé Pierre. Half-D'Artagnan, half-Victor Hugo, half-Cyrano, half-Saint Vincent de Paul, he is, like General de Gaulle, an icon of France. Icons never die and that's why the French remember them. The state should listen to it and listen to the hearts of the French people. "To great men, the grateful fatherland", can be read on the pediment of the Pantheon... Abbé Pierre is a great man and the homeland wishes to express its gratitude to him. So what are we waiting for? Did the French wait for the opinion of the Church to make him a saint? No... They canonized him long ago.
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Resistant, founder of an immense work, urgency of misery if there ever was one, Abbé Pierre was part of all the battles when it came to raising his brothers on the ground, miserable, discouraged, desperate. He did so until his death at the expense of fragile health, carried by immense faith and boundless compassion in the service of the most suffering. He was a giant soul in a frail body. In this fight or rather this mission, nothing would have been able to stop him. Neither the annoyance of the state authorities nor that of the Church authorities. He told each other what they were doing. Sharply and without tongue in cheek. There was John the Baptist in him, the prophet who entailed King Herod without manners. In the service of the poorest among us, he was afraid of nothing. Neither threats, nor what will be said, nor the cynicism of the right-thinking, nor the cowardice of the selfish He castigated the indifference towards the other that our society is dying. If the Church turns its nose at the idea of making him a saint of the calendar, that's her business! Certainly he was not perfect, he was only human. But this man pushed heroism to extremes, against all odds. He performed miracles by the thousands in the hearts of the people of the "voiceless", those who are not heard or heard little or do not want to hear.
Abbé Pierre was a hero of Good at the service of an absolute cause: freedom, courage, service to those who suffer misery and injustice. This is how a "great man" or a "great lady" defines himself.
Pierre Lunel
The state, on the other hand, has no need for perfection. Created by men in the service of men, therefore essentially imperfect, it is therefore not able to judge their perfection. The State only needs great examples in the service of the Common Good. Abbé Pierre was a hero of Good at the service of an absolute cause: freedom, courage, service to those who suffer misery and injustice. This is how a "great man" or a "great lady" defines himself. I am neither a man of the Church nor a statesman, I am only a writer who has met this incredible man and followed for twenty-five years. It turned my life upside down as well as that of the greatest number of French people. As he had upset Coluche came a few months before his death to give him a big check, the "rab" of the first campaign of the Restos du Cœur. I have always believed that one of the roles of the state is education in knowledge, but also in the essential values of life, and that it had to teach our contemporaries, young and old, the example of those who defend these values with all their strength. And even to the risk of their lives. Abbé Pierre was one of them. He is the heir in line of Vincent de Paul "Mr. Vincent", the one who takes the place of the galley at the end of his strength. He would be with all those who suffer today; alongside those who stand up against all secular or religious dictatorships, whether in Russia or Iran. An imperfect hero because he is deeply human, he is nevertheless a hero of the extreme. A French hero. A living myth.
I am happy to see that in 2023 a wonderful director and actors tell on the big screen "Abbé Pierre - A life of fights", presented out of competition at the Cannes Film Festival. I am grateful to the media who did not hesitate to evoke my latest born this "intimate Abbé Pierre" released in bookstores, fruit of twenty years of maturation. This means that this man is not dead and yet we feel orphaned. We have not lost the habit of admiring what is beautiful and supportive... The more than fifteen thousand messages received on my social networks testify to this. They can be summed up in these few words: "We miss him!" As we probably miss Gandhi, Martin Luther King and Mandela. The French are as they are, carried away and revolutionary, jealous of their freedom. They are quick to rant, to cut croupières to those who govern us, but they distinguish perfectly good from evil and do not take bladders for lanterns ... They recognize themselves in Abbé Pierre, "Abbot Furax"! They don't like bad guys, fools or thugs. To those who make the earth ugly, they prefer those who embellish it. They are politically incorrect. They prefer lawyers to prosecutors, the child-eyed old rather than the grumpy and poets rather than the inquisitors. Instinctively, they prefer Jean Valjean to Javert and Bishop Myriel des Misérables to the devil's advocate. They prefer the part of the good to the part that fails and the gesture that honors to the one who minorits. They love heroes, real ones! Abbé Pierre knew anger and weaknesses. Because he was tall, he sometimes – but so rarely – happened to be small. To live too much as a hero, the human sometimes claims his due. What does this weigh in view of what he has built, the immense work he leaves and his compassion at all times. The one that made him break off a conversation with François Mitterrand, the man who believed "in the forces of the spirit", because a poor bugger opened his door... This does not weigh anything. Absolutely nothing.
In a few months, the biopic on Abbé Pierre will be released in theaters and the French will pay tribute to him. Soon after, in February 2024, the France will remember the call "My friends, help!" seventyyears ago. Already. Abbé Pierre must enter the Pantheon. Not for him, who is well in his small Norman cemetery of Esteville with his Companions ... But so that the France can say to him with tenderness: "Thank you for everything you have done." That would only be fair.