Next week we are holding another special event to look at the work of the French Catholic Church’s Mission Ouvrière, the worker mission established 80 years ago to reach out to working people.
Many of us will remember Pope Pius XI’s famous lament to Cardijn that “the greatest tragedy of the 19th century was the loss of the working class to the Church.”
Others will recall the famous book, France, Pays de mission – France a mission country -, written by YCW chaplains, Henri Godin and Yvan Daniel, which showed the extent to which the Church had lost touch with the masses.
Since then, Pope Francis has reframed that mission as a mission to the “periphery,” meaning reaching those people beyond the reach of the Church’s traditional structures.
And this is the work of the French Mission Ouvrière, which continues to provide a framework for the YCW, the Christian Workers Movement, a children’s movement, workers priests and a whole range of apostolic groups.
Could it offer a model for Australia today as the Church seeks to implement the decisions of the recent Plenary Council?
To discuss this and other issues, we’ve invited Jackie Hocquet and Bernard Schricke, both former YCW leaders, now working with Caritas France, to explain the Worker Mission model.
Read more
The French Worker Mission (translated document)
Mission Ouvrière Nationale (French)
DATE AND TIME
Thursday 22 September 2022, 7pm AEST
REGISTER
https://us02web.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZItfu6spzgoH9eXJMEXmQh_3qNKrMmFN8NS
