Joseph Cardijn Digital Library
The Joseph Cardijn Digital Library (www.josephcardijn.com) is an online repository in French and English of Cardijn’s writings, biographical material, including photos and videos, testimonies from those who knew and worked with him. It also hosts a growing list of short biographies of other jocist leaders and chaplains, including some who have their own dedicated sites.
Established in its current form, the JCDL now hosts over 2000 documents, with more added each month.
Plenary Council Project
ACI has made two submissions to the Australian Plenary Council, both of which focus on the promotion of the specifically lay apostolate of lay people as understood by Cardijn and endorsed by Vatican II.
In addition, we have developed a specialised website to host material on the lay apostolate:
https://layapostolate.australiancardijninstitute.org/
Making life beautiful: Jocist Women Leaders Project
In 2021, ACI launched a new project that aims to document the lives and work of women leaders from the JOC and other Specialised Catholic Action movements. An international team of researchers has been assembled to work on the project which is aiming to publish a book recording the stories of ten women jocist leaders and to launch an online biographical dictionary to host the stories of many more.
Project website: http://jocistwomen.josephcardijn.com/
Research Resources
ACI has created a series of websites to host a variety of resources for researchers into the work of the jocist movements, including History of the Cardijn Movements in Australia and a Historical News Timeline.
Research Library
ACI is developing a research library on Cardijn, lay apostolate, the history and work of the JOC and its sister movements, Vatican II, etc. Currently, we have a collection of over 2000 books and documents, including many rare historical sources.
Webinars, seminars and conferences
ACI began by organising a series of events at Catholic Theological College, Melbourne, in 2018. Since the outbreak of Covid19, we have moved to monthly webinars covering a wide range of topics, including Catholic Social Teaching (Rerum Novarum, Fratelli Tutti…), Vatican II, current events and the lay apostolate in general.
Publications
ACI has published two books. The first was Cardijn’s classic , Challenge to Action. The second was Stefan Gigacz’s PhD thesis, The Leaven in the Council: Joseph Cardijn and the Jocist Network at Vatican II.
We have also republished online versions of resources by the late YCW chaplain, Fr Hugh O’Sullivan:
We also publish a monthly ACI Newsletter.