In , he founded the Emmaus movement, with the goal of helping poor and homeless people. For years, he was one of the most popular figures in France. Allegations of sexual abuse of at least 57 women and children emerged in and He spent his childhood in Irigny , near Lyon. In , aged 16, he made the decision to join a monastic order, but he had to wait until he was seventeen and a half to fulfill this ambition. He had to leave in after developing severe lung infections, which made monastic life difficult to cope with.
He became chaplain to the sick at several places [ 2 ] and then was nominated as curate of Grenoble 's cathedral in April , only a few months before the invasion of Poland. The theologian Henri de Lubac told him on the day of his priestly ordination: "Ask the Holy Spirit to grant you the same anti-clericalism of the saints". When World War II broke out in , he was mobilised as a non-commissioned officer in the train transport corps. According to his official biography, he helped Jewish people to escape Nazi persecution following the July mass arrests in Paris, called the Rafle du Vel' d'Hiv , and another raid in the area of Grenoble in the non-occupied zone: "In July , two fleeing Jews asked him for help.
Having discovered the persecution taking place, he immediately went to learn how to make false passports. Starting in August , he guided Jewish people to Switzerland". His pseudonym dates from his work with the French Resistance during the Second World War, when he operated under several different names. Based in Grenoble, an important center of the Resistance, he helped Jews and politically persecuted escape to Switzerland.
He participated in establishing a section of the maquis where he officially became one of the local leaders in the Vercors Plateau and in the Chartreuse Mountains. He had become an important symbol of the French Resistance. In , he was re-elected as a member of the National Assembly, but this time as a member of the MRP. In , before the end of his mandate, he returned to his first vocation: helping the homeless.
With the modest funds he had received as a deputy, he invested in a run-down house near Paris in the Neuilly-Plaisance neighbourhood, repairing the whole house. He made it the first Emmaus base because, according to him, it was simply too big for one person.
