Helder Camara Archives - Australian Cardijn Institute

July 18, 2022July 18, 2022

The Pact of the Catacombs and the Pietralata Message

ACI has launched a new website – pactofthecatacombs.com – that tells the story of the Pact of the Catacombs for a Church of the Poor and its long forgotten counterpart, the Pietralata Message, for a worker Church.

The story began with a proposal by Brazilian Archbishop Helder Camara to hold two Eucharistic celebrations towards the end of the Fourth Session of Vatican II in October or November 1965.

The two masses took place on successive evenings on 16 and 17 November 1965, just prior to the promulgation of the Decree on Lay Apostolate, Apostolicam Actuositatem, on 18 November.

The Mass for a Poor and Servant Church was held first in the Domitilla Catacombs. It was there that the document later to become known as the Pact of the Catacombs was adopted by the bishops present.

The Mass for Workers took place the following evening at Cardijn’s cardinal’s parish church of St Michael Archangel in the working class Rome suburb of Pietralata. There, the gathered bishops adopted a second document, the Pietralata Message.

Much has been written about the Pact of the Catacombs yet little is known of the Pietralata Message.

This website presents them both pairing them again in the way that Helder Camara had originally intended and hoped.

VISIT THE WEBSITE

https://www.pactofthecatacombs.com

October 18, 2021October 18, 2021

Cardijn’s triumph: The World Congress on Lay Apostolate 1951

This month we celebrate the 70th anniversary of one of Cardijn’s greatest triumphs, i.e. his keynote speech to and decisive influence over the First World Congress on Lay Apostolate in Rome from 7-14 October 1951, which helped set the stage for Vatican II.

Recalling Cardijn’s keynote speech entitled, “The World Today and the Lay Apostolate,” Brazilian Bishop Helder Camara would later characterise Cardijn’s ” complete panorama of the great issues of the present time” as having a “very great impact” on him, “one of the greatest of my life.”

In the longer term, however, the most important impact of Cardijn’s speech and the work of his allies was the change in perspective introduced by the Congress.

As Stefan Gigacz writes in an article recalling the Congress and Cardijn’s contribution, “the Congress proved to be a defining moment, introducing two major shifts in perspective that would come to fruition at Vatican II.”

First, it introduced the JOC’s reality-based see-judge-act as the method of work at the Congress instead of the traditional doctrinal approach beginning from Church teaching.

Secondly, and equally if not even more important, it introduced Cardijn’s conception of lay apostolate as the role of the lay person transforming the world “in his personal life, in his family, professional, social, cultural and civic life, on the national and international planes” rather than in terms of personal piety, charitable and even social action.

In this sense, Cardijn’s speech anticipated both the conception of lay apostolate that would be adopted by Vatican II in its Constitution on the Church, Lumen Gentium, and Decree on the Lay Apostolate, Apostolicam Actuositatem, as well as the see-judge-act method adopted in the Pastoral Constitution of the Church in the World of Today, Gaudium et Spes.

Indeed, Cardijn’s conception of a “new apostolate” for the emerging “new world” also directly foreshadows the concept of “new evangelisation” that would be adopted by the CELAM bishops at Medellin in 1968.

Joseph Cardijn, The world today and the apostolate of the laity (Joseph Cardijn Digital Library)

Stefan Gigacz, Cardijn and the First World Congress on Lay Apostolate 1951 (Cardijn Research)

Stefan Gigacz, The leaven in the Council, Joseph Cardijn and the Jocist Network at Vatican II (Australian Cardijn Institute)

April 11, 2019September 1, 2020

The jocist bishops and the Church of the Poor bishops

ACI secretary, Stefan Gigacz, presented a paper entitled “The jocist bishops and the Vatican II Church of the Poor group” at the Option for the Poor: Engaging the Social Tradition conference organised by the Center for Social Concerns at the University of Notre Dame, USA, on 23 March 2019.

Also presenting was Bob Pennington from Mount St Joseph University, Cincinnati, Ohio, who presented a paper entitled ““The Methodological Turn toward a Preferential Option for the Poor: The Cardinal Cardijn Canon from Rome to Latin America and Back Again?”

Keynote speakers at the conference included Gustavo Gutierrez, pioneer of liberation theology.

Stefan Gigacz’s presentation