France's tireless campaigner for homeless returns to microphone

FORTY years to the day after he first took a radio microphone and aroused the French social conscience, Abbe Pierre was back yesterday describing the plight of the homeless while office space remained unoccupied as 'abominable and criminal'.

'Abbe Pierre' was the Second World War resistance pseudonym for Henri Groues who went on to become a radical member of the Chamber of Deputies in the post- war Fourth Republic.

Now 81 and known everywhere only as 'Abbe Pierre', the Franciscan priest's gaunt, bearded face topped by a beret - 'I never look at myself in a mirror' - has become the symbol of charity in modern France.

On 1 February 1954, Abbe Pierre went to the Paris studios of Radio Luxembourg during a cruelly cold winter and, during the lunch-time news, said on the air: 'Friends] Help] A woman died frozen at 3am last night on the pavement of the Boulevard de Sebastopol clutching the paper by which, the day before yesterday, she was evicted.' His appeal was followed by a flood of contributions, an event perceived as the start of modern French charitable action.

Then, facing the problems of post-war reconstruction, France had an unemployment figure of just over 300,000. Now, despite comparative prosperity, the number of jobless has risen ten-fold, producing a new class of poor. The 1990 census put the number of homeless at 98,000 with 1.43m people in housing below recognised standards.

Yesterday, talking again on Radio Luxembourg, Abbe Pierre called on the French to petition their mayors by 15 March to help the homeless.

'France must build immediately and for everyone,' he said. 'It has the means, the money, the know-how, the workforce and the room.' It was not admissible to 'leave housing or offices empty or, even more, destroy habitable spaces where it is not essential. This is abominable and criminal.'

Abbe Pierre accepted and then returned his Legion of Honour. His constant protest is for the homeless, a phenomenon he sees as totally unacceptable in a modern, industrialised society.

Despite age and Parkinson's Disease, Abbe Pierre has a Mother Teresa-like reputation for practical action. In October, he went to join a group of squatters threatened with eviction by police in Paris's 14th arrondissement. The police withdrew, leaving the matter to town-hall negotiators.

In 1954, the satirical weekly Le Canard Enchaine wrote: 'France has had Joan of Arc. France has had Charles de Gaulle. Today France has Abbe Pierre.' Always near the top of the list of France's most popular celebrities, he has been recruited by the Greens to head the ecologists' list in the European elections next June.

The 40th anniversary of his appeal has prompted a spate of tributes and articles in the press. Extracts from a book he is to publish tomorrow expressed his disapproval of formal religion in place of action. 'What is so inspiring about going to Mass with a lot of old ladies?' he asked. 'Participating in Sunday Mass is not an order of Christ.'

The daily Liberation asked a number of personalities if he should be made a saint. The French Catholic Church replied that the question could not be put during a person's lifetime, adding: 'Let's keep him alive as long as possible'.