Emmanuel News North America, October 2026

Born of the Spirit: the beginning of the Emmanuel Community

The Emmanuel Community began in February 1972, when a Parisian layman named Pierre Goursat and a small circle of friends received what the Catholic Charismatic Renewal calls the outpouring of the Holy Spirit.

A layman

Pierre Goursat, born in Paris on 15 August 1914, was not a priest or a religious. The Community's Guide describes him as "a layperson who had offered his life to God in celibacy" by a private vow. He lived a simple, poor life of charity toward those around him, and he loved the Church and Our Lady.

He "offered himself in Adoration and allowed himself to be set on fire by God's love, flowing from the Heart of Christ." That long, quiet preparation matters. When the Spirit came in 1972, he found a man already given to prayer, poverty and service.

February 1972: the outpouring of the Holy Spirit

On the weekend of 12–13 February 1972, Xavier and Brigitte Le Pichon, who had discovered the Charismatic Renewal in the United States, shared their experience with about forty people at Father Henri Caffarel's prayer house in Troussures. Pierre Goursat, then 57, was among them, along with Dr. Martine Laffitte.

The Community's own account says that Pierre and Martine "received a powerful and straightforward fraternal communion simultaneously: they recognized themselves as brother and sister." They began to pray together every day.

The outpouring of the Spirit is "an opening of the heart to the Holy Spirit in whom we place our whole lives for His direction." It is "above all an initiative by God by which He manifests Himself in a special way as a living person close to us." Those who receive it "discover or rediscover the meaning of their baptism and their confirmation." The Guide states plainly that "the Community was born from this experience of the Spirit."

From prayer group to Community, 1973–1976

The growth was quick and unplanned. Pierre and Martine's prayer meetings drew more and more people. The group grew to about 500, and then divided and re-formed under the name "Emmanuel," which the members say they "received in prayer" as meaning "God with us" (Is 7:14; Mt 1:23).

• 1973The first prayer group takes the name Emmanuel.
• 1974Some members want a deeper shared life, and the first household opens, with Pierre among its residents.
• 1976After a September retreat "almost everyone wanted to continue," and the Community was officially born. Members kept their own homes but took on "common and regular commitments."

The first members were lay people, married and single. Priests and consecrated members joined later, and the Guide now describes a Community of "all the states of life" living in communion.

Paray-le-Monial: the heart of Emmanuel

In the summer of 1975 Pierre organized a gathering of Charismatic Renewal groups at Paray-le-Monial, the town where Jesus appeared to St. Margaret Mary Alacoque three hundred years earlier. The Community came to see that "Paray-le-Monial must become his heart."

The Guide recounts that Pierre once told the mystic Marthe Robin that Paray-le-Monial would be the centre of Emmanuel. She answered: "Say rather its heart!"

The Guide says this was no accident. Paray, it explains, gathers the Community's grace: the Incarnation, the Eucharist, adoration, compassion and evangelisation, "openness to the Holy Spirit" and the call to witness to mercy. It also calls Paray "a very special place for the outpouring of the Spirit," where many have received it and then carried the work of the Spirit around the world. It describes Paray as a Trinitarian place, where one discovers "the love of the Father, the gift of the Son and the fire of the Spirit."