Abbé Pierre died yesterday. Here is the obituary from the Times of London. Here is a tribute from Le Figaro. I love the expression that France is "endeuillée." Money quote from the Times:
On a visit to Assisi at 14 he discovered St Francis and decided to become a monk. At 19 he told the young woman who was his dance partner one evening: "This is my last dance for I am joining the Capuchins tomorrow."
In 1931 he gave away his worldly goods and spent eight years with the Capuchins, being ordained on August 14, 1938. An assistant priest at Grenoble Cathedral at the time of the 1940 armistice, he started to help Jews to cross the Alps to Switzerland. On another occasion he carried Jacques de Gaulle, the paralysed brother of Charles de Gaulle who was being hunted by the Gestapo, across the barbed wire of the Swiss border and to safety in Geneva.
Then this:
Mitterrand, a longtime friend from the Abb√©’s days in the National Assembly, dropped in at Esteville by presidential helicopter in 1992 to ask him whether he entertained "doubts". The Abb√© replied: "Only when I was 16. There have been many questions since then, but no doubts."
Maybe that’s a more eloquent formulation than my defense of faith-in-doubt. Maybe I mean faith-with-questions. I’ll wait for Sam’s next sally and try to explain again.
The Dish 