Lucie Coutaz  (1899-1982)

Version française

Lucie Coutaz was born in 1899 in Grenoble. Her mother was a glove maker, her father a road mender. Rural exodus had her parents, who were from Savoie, come and work in the city. "Luce" grew up in a working-class suburb. She attended the parish youth club and trained in social Catholicism. She obtained a diploma in shorthand typing, and began working as a secretary at Lustucru at the age of fifteen.

In 1915, she was stricken with tuberculosis in the bones, a disease that was incurable at the time. She spent many months bedridden, with a few periods of improvement. In 1918, she contracted the Spanish flu. Her older sister died from it but Lucie survived. In 1921, the young girls of the club contributed to send her on a pilgrimage to Lourdes, she returned cured.

Considering that she could have died twice, she decided to devote her life to others. She became active in the free women's unions of Isère, a Catholic union set up by women, for women. Alongside with it she entered successively two religious societies of secular sisters without any particular external sign. In 1936, her union joined the CFTC (French Confederation of Christian Workers). Lucie Coutaz was the only woman among the seven permanent staff of the department. She negotiated collective agreements and developed a leadership temperament.

Even before June 1940, Lucie Coutaz was resolutely committed to the fight against Nazism. She camouflaged the union's duplicator at her home, reproduced and distributed resistance leaflets, and organized clandestine conferences with the Jesuits of Lyon. They put her in touch with Abbé Pierre. Together they organized a maquis, and Lucie Coutaz's office became a hub of the Grenoble Resistance. She was decorated with the Croix de Guerre with bronze star.

When Abbé Pierre was asked to campaign in the legislative elections in Meurthe et Moselle at the Liberation, he asked her to become his assistant. They would never stop working together. In 1949, while Lucie Coutaz was managing an international youth hostel in Neuilly Plaisance, in a large house rented by Abbé Pierre, they welcomed a desperate man, Georges Legay: the first Emmaus community was born.

As Abbé Pierre's personal assistant Lucie Coutaz accompanied the development of Emmaus: the reception of the first companions and the construction of the first dwellings, the 1954 insurrection of justice and generosity, itinerant communities and youth camps, as well as the internationalisation of the Emmaus movement from 1955 onwards and its structuring, which accelerated in the 1970s.

“Brother Lucy”, “Lulu la Terreur”, “the Watchtower”, “the Goat”... Lucie Coutaz's nicknames describe a strong woman, who knew how to be respected, especially by the Emmaus companions. Other testimonies speak of a gentle and caring woman who was deeply a Christian.

From 1964 onwards, she enjoyed staying as often as possible in Esteville, where a community was organized that became a retirement home for elderly companions in 1972. She had always been close to nature and loved flowers very much. She launched the "wool patches" initiative, inviting "three and four times twenty years" to knit more than 2,000 blankets for developing countries. She had a stroke in 1980 and lived her last years in Charenton (Val-de-Marne), where she died on May 16, 1982. According to her wishes, she rests in the Esteville cemetery, under the arms of Christ placed on the ground.