Respected French priest accused of sexual assaults

A late French priest celebrated for his work with the poor has been accused of sexually assaulting several women, one of them underage, charities Emmaus and Fondation Abbe Pierre said on Wednesday.

"Our organisations celebrate the courage of the people who have given testimony and, through their words, allowed these facts to come to light. We believe them," the organisations said in a joint statement about Henri Groues, known as "Abbe Pierre" (Abbott Pierre), who died in 2007 aged 94.

The allegations are detailed in an independent report commissioned by the charities after a first claim that Groues assaulted a woman.

"This work meant the testimonies of seven women could be gathered, attesting to behaviour that could be interpreted as sexual assault or sexual harassment," between 1970 and 2005, the charities said.

One of the women "was underage at the time of the events", they added.

A source at Emmaus told AFP that no criminal complaint has so far been filed.

The bishop's conference of France's Catholic Church professed "deep compassion and shame that such acts could be committed by a priest" in a post to X.

Some 17 years after his death, Groues's gaunt, bearded features remain a familiar sight in posters in charity shops and in metro stations urging French citizens to think of the poor.

He gave his inheritance away aged 18 to join the order of Capuchin monks, later becoming active in the Resistance to Nazi occupation and spending several post-war years as a member of parliament.

In 1949, he founded the Emmaus community that preaches self-help for excluded people, and which has since spread to dozens of countries.

He was also a backer of the "Restos du coeur" soup kitchens movement and attacked city governments for failing to lodge the homeless.