AP. (Henri Grouès) was born in Lyon, France to a wealthy Catholic family of silk traders, the fifth of eight children. He spent his childhood in Irigny, near Lyon. In 1928, he made the decision to join a monastic order, and entered in 1931 the Capuchin Order, the principal off-shoot of the Franciscans, renouncing his inheritances and offering all his possessions to charities. He entered the monastery of Crest in 1932, where he lived seven years. In 1939 he became chaplain in the hospital of La Mure (Isère), and then of an orphanage in the Côte-Saint-André (also in the Isère department). After being ordained a Roman Catholic priest on August 24, 1938, he became curate of Grenoble's cathedral in April 1939. During war he helped Jewish people to escape Nazi persecution. In 1944 he went to Spain, then Gibraltar, to finally join the Free French Forces of General de Gaulle in Algeria, where he became a chaplain in the French Navy. 

When the war was over, AP. was elected deputy as a member of the National Assembly. In 1951, before the end of his mandate, he returned to his first vocation: to help homeless people. Already in 1950, he had created the first community of Emmaus companions near Paris. In an Emmaus community, volunteers help homeless people by giving them accommodation, and somewhere to eat and work. AP. was called to India in 1971 to represent, along with the Ligue des droits de l'homme (Human Rights League) France in the issues of refugees. In the 1990s, AP. criticized the apartheid regime in South Africa. 
 
A staunch supporter of the Palestinian cause, he attracted attention with some of his statements on the Israeli-Palestine conflict. In 1996, he supported "à titre amical" ("in title of friendship") Roger Garaudy in the matter of the latter's book, "The Foundational Myths of Israeli Politics", for the publication of which Garaudy was convicted in 1998 under the 1990 Gayssot Act. AP. was immediately excluded from the honour committee of the LICRA (International League against Racism and Anti-Semitism), and was criticized by all  Jewish organisations and the Church hierarchy. AP. then went into retreat in the Benedictine monastery of Praglia in Italy, near Padua, where he met again Roger Garaudy. There he declared to the 'Corriere della Sera' that the French press was inspired by an international Zionist lobby.

In 2004, AP. went to Algeria after the rebuilding of lodgings by the 'Fondation Abbé Pierre', following the 2003 earthquake which destroyed parts of the country. In 2004, he was awarded the Grand Cross of the Legion of Honor by Jacques Chirac. AP. remained active until his death on 22 January 2007 in the Val-de-Grâce military hospital in Paris, following a lung infection, aged 94. 
 
 
Letzte Änderung / Last update: 05.08.2013 

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