Céline Béraud has been named President of the study commission implemented by the Emmaus Movement on the violence committed by Abbé Pierre.
Emmaus International and Emmaus France have asked Céline Béraud, Director of Studies at the Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales (EHESS), to chair the work of the study commission announced by the Movement in September. Céline Béraud accepted the role and will first be responsible for freely assembling her team of experts, whose objective will be to understand and analyse the mechanisms that allowed Abbé Pierre’s acts of sexual violence not to be publicly revealed for more than 70 years.
To the extent possible, the commission will also have to establish the level of information that the Movement had on Abbé Pierre’s actions at different periods of its history and determine what managers’ attitudes were regarding this information.
On this particularly sensitive subject, we believe this expert team must carry out this long analysis without disruption. The commission will draw up its work plan completely independently, based on objectives defined in consultation with Emmaus International.
The commission will have full access to the archives of Abbé Pierre and Emmaus International, and with the victims’ consent, will be able to consult the full reports of the interviews conducted by Groupe Egaé as part of its listening work requested by the Emmaus Movement in 2024.
Finally, the commission may plan to hear from select individuals, witnesses, experts, relatives or members of Abbé Pierre’s family.
The Emmaus Movement has full confidence that this commission’s work will meet its objectives, which also echo the questions shared within our organisations and beyond.
The full makeup of the commission will be announced before the end of the year, and its work will begin in early 2025, for an estimated duration of 2 years.
About Céline Béraud:
Sociologist, Céline Béraud is director of studies at EHESS and a member of the Centre for Studies in the Social Sciences of Religion (CéSor). Her research focuses on issues of gender and sexuality in Catholicism, as well as religion in public institutions. She is particularly interested in the modalities of exercising authority. In 2021, she published Le Catholicisme français à l’épreuve des scandales sexuels (French Catholicism tested by sexual scandals) (Editions du Seuil). She was a member of the Working Group on “Analysis of the Causes of Sexual Violence in the Church” set up in the wake of the Sauvé report and she participated in the scientific committee that accompanied the study commission mandated by L’Arche Internationale to shed light on the mechanisms of psychological control and sexual abuse committed by Thomas Philippe and Jean Vanier.
Adrien Chaboche, Chief Executive of Emmaus International:
“Setting up this commission is a big step for Emmaus. As we know and the testimonies of recent months confirm, given the mechanisms of sexual violence, it is unimaginable that such acts could have occurred without anyone being informed. It remains to be determined what exactly these people knew, including the nature and extent of the acts, and why they made the choices they did. We hope that this commission will enable us to answer the many remaining questions, and that it will help us to prevent such behaviour in the future, within Emmaus and in all civil society organisations.”
Céline Béraud, President of the study commission:
“The recent months’ revelations concerning Abbé Pierre have aroused great collective emotion and strong indignation. One of the challenges is grasping and analysing the mechanisms that enabled several decades of silence regarding these acts and led to the priest not being condemned internally by the Church or denounced to civil justice. These mechanisms are to be found both in the ecclesial institution and in other social worlds in which Abbé Pierre was an important and respected figure for his actions for the poorest.”
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