5 Euros Abbé Pierre

Issued to mark the centenary of Henri Grouès's birth, this small gold piece honors the Capuchin friar better known as Abbé Pierre, founder of the Emmaus movement in 1949. He had launched Emmaus after a period of acute postwar housing crisis in France, but it was his radio appeal during the catastrophic winter of 1954 — temperatures dropping to record lows, people dying in the streets of Paris — that turned a local charity into a national institution almost overnight.