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Today's News | News of Jan 22, 2007
Abbe Pierre, French Champion of the Poor, Dies at 94

Paris, Jan 22
Abbe Pierre, who spent his entire adult life working for the destitute and became one of the most beloved people in France, died early Monday in hospital at age 94, a friend announced.

Martin Hirsch, the head of the humanitarian association Abbe Pierre founded, said the "Father of the Poor" had succumbed to pneumonia, for which he had been hospitalized one week earlier.

President Jacques Chirac said in a statement that he was "shattered" by the news of Abbe Pierre's death, and described him as "an immense figure, a conscience, an incarnation of goodness."

Born as Henri Groues on August 5, 1912, in the city of Lyon, he became a Capuchin monk on 1931 and was ordained as a priest seven years later. He took the name Abbe Pierre while working for the French Resistance during the Nazi occupation in World War II.

Following the war, he served as a deputy in the French National Assembly for six years. During that time, he founded the Ragmen of Emmaeus in 1949, which has grown into one of the largest associations working for the poor and homeless in the country.

In 2004, he was named the most popular person in France in a poll conducted for the weekly Journal du Dimanche, and has been near the top of that survey ever since. It was an honour he did not reject.

"The media exist," he once said. "It would be idiotic not to use them." 

DPA News of Jan 22, 2007

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