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	Dead Priest Denies Paternity IOL [France] May 21, 2007 http://www.iol.co.za/index.php?set_id=1&click_id=3&art_id=nw20070521192719842C194075 Paris - Abbe Pierre, a hugely popular French priest who died in January, spoke from beyond the grave on Monday to deny claims he had fathered an illegitimate son and that police had manipulated a DNA test to cover this up. In an interview given before his death to counter the expected post-mortem charge, Abbe Pierre said a man claiming to be his son refused to believe his denials and the negative result from a DNA test he took in 2004 to prove them. "This claim is devoid of any foundation," he said in an April 2006 interview that the Catholic weekly Pelerin issued on Monday. "I never had any union with his mother." The claim against Abbe Pierre, who died at 94 after being voted France's most popular person for years, surfaced last week when a publishing house confirmed it would publish a book by the man, Jean-Christophe Menetrier, on May 25. Abbe Pierre admitted in a 2005 book that he had broken his vow of celibacy "on rare occasions." Pelerin said Menetrier apparently took this as an indirect admission of paternity and decided to go public with his book. In the Pelerin interview, Abbe Pierre conceded that this confession could raise questions about his behaviour but insisted he never slept with Menetrier's mother, who lived with her husband in one of his first houses for the homeless. She abandoned her husband and three children in 1956, when Menetrier was two years old, and died in 1982. Menetrier's father put him in foster homes, where he grew up, and a relative told him years later that Abbe Pierre was his real father. Menetrier later worked closely with Abbe Pierre in his campaign for the homeless, where he apparently interpreted the big-hearted priest's concern for him as indirect proof of his paternity, Pelerin wrote. "He was in real distress and was looking for help," said Abbe Pierre, saying Menetrier suffered from the thought that the priest was his father and he could not talk about it. Pelerin said Menetrier, who signed the book with the pseudonym Jean-Christophe d'Escaut, had written two versions of his autobiography since 1987 and shown both to Abbe Pierre. "In April 2006, the Vatican informed the French bishops conference about rumours and a threat by a self-styled 'son' to have (newscaster) Patrick Poivre d'Arvor invite him on the TF1 television news and reveal everything," it wrote. Menetrier titled his new book "Abbe Pere" (Reverend Father), a takeoff on the priest's name Abbe Pierre (Reverend Pierre). Pelerin said it sought the interview with Abbe Pierre to have his version if Menetier ever carried out the threat to publish his book. "We would have preferred that this document stayed in our archives," it wrote in an editorial.
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