 In 2010 he arranged for retired priests to vacate six apartments in a Church-owned apartment building in the Saint-Pierre district of Marseille to allow for six Roma families to be housed there, provoking resistance from locals and their political representatives.And in 2017 he called on the French government to devise better solutions for the Roma who are being "shuffled from one place to another".In the Bishops Conference of France (CEF) he was vice president from 2001 to 2007, headed its Studies and Projects Committee from 2008 to 2013, and president from 2013 to 2019.