His support "à titre amical" ("in title of friendship") for Roger Garaudy in 1996 brought controversy. The "Garaudy Affair" had been revealed in January 1996 by the "Canard enchaîné" satirical newspaper, which prompted a series of denunciations against his book, "The Foundational Myths of Israeli Politics," and led Garaudy to be charged of negationism (before being convicted in 1998, under the 1990 Gayssot Act). But Garaudy provoked public indignation when he announced in March that he was supported by the Abbé Pierre, who was immediately excluded from the honour committee of the LICRA (International League against Racism and Anti-Semitism). The Abbé condemned those who tried to "negate, banalize or falsify the Shoah," but his continued support to Garaudy as a friend was criticized by all anti-racist, Jewish organisations (MRAP, CRIF, Anti-Defamation League, etc.) and the Church hierarchy. His friend Bernard Kouchner, co-founder of Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF), criticized him for "absolving the intolerable," while Cardinal Jean-Marie Lustiger (and archbishop of Paris from 1981 to 2005) publicly disavowed him. The Abbé then went into retreat in the Benedictine monastery of Praglia near Padua, Italy, where, according to the Voltaire Network, he would have met again Roger Garaudy. The Voltaire Network wrote that the Abbé had declared to the "Corriere della Sera" that the French press was "inspired by an international Zionist lobby". In the film documentary "Un abbé nommé Pierre, une vie au service des autres", the Abbé declared that his support had been towards the person of Roger Garaudy, and not towards his statements in his book, which he had not read.