Young Christian Workers

One night in a small town in Halle, Belgium a small boy called Joseph crept downstairs to where his mother and father were discussing his future and hesitantly announced to them that he wanted to continue his studies and become a priest. In later years he never forgot their generous response and the sacrifice it meant for them as working people to support his calling. On his father’s death in 1903 Joseph Cardijn, now in the major seminary, pledged to give himself entirely to the service of working class people. This appreciation of his parents’ faith and generosity was combined with the pain he experienced at seeing the effect of working life on his friends who went straight into the factories from school and with his sensitivity to the deplorable conditions of working life suffered by young workers in his first parish in Laeken near Brussels in 1912. Fr Cardijn was a lively and energetic man of action. He did not wait for the young people to come to him and because of his attentiveness to the realities of working and family life neither did he sit in the presbytery lamenting the absence of young people from the church on Sunday. He mingled with the homeward bound workers in the streets and learned more and more about their situations. He was then able to set up small ‘study circles’ in which, initially, young women could share their experiences and seek solutions together for the challenges they faced at work, at home, among their friends and in their neighbourhood. Soon the boys also sought to benefit from this experience and formed their own groups. Those years were a period of ceaseless activity and experiment. Father Cardijn was no mere theorist. He was also ready to try new methods over and over again until they achieved real formative results. The First World War did not interrupt his efforts even though on two occasions he was imprisoned for patriotic activities. During the several months he spent in the prison‑cells he was able to meditate upon his experiences and to outline practical methods of apostolic formation for young working people. Eventually in 1924 together with three of the early leaders from Laeken, Ferdinand Tonnet, Paul Garcet and Jacques Meert, Fr Joseph Cardijn created an organisation which would specifically address the needs of young working people, the Young Christian Worker Movement. The Second World War did hamper the progress of the YCW which had spread throughout Belgium and many other countries in Europe. Fr Cardijn was again imprisoned for his opposition to Nazi philosophy and two of the early leaders died in concentration camps. When peace finally came to Europe the development of the Movement resumed and in the 1950s spread all over the world. In 1957 the first international team was formed in the context of an International gathering in Rome. Ten years later the founder of the YCW, now Cardinal Joseph Cardijn, died at the age of 84, having visited the Movement in every continent. In 1975 a new Declaration of Principles was drawn up during the International Council of the IYCW (International YCW) in Linz which provoked protest and division among the member Movements. After ten years of internal unresolved debate a new International Coordination was formed (ICYCW) in 1986 in order to re-establish the original principles and method of the Movement. This was subsequently recognised by the Church as promoting the authentic form of the YCW in line with the original vision of its founder, Joseph Cardijn. When Fr Cardijn started his first small group of young working men over 80 years ago, he said to them: “We are setting out to conquer the world.” We hope this manual, translated and spread around the world, will help to continue that conquest in the spirit of overcoming all obstacles that prevent young people living the fullness of life which God intended for them. “Three fundamental truths dominate and illumine the problem of the working youth of the world. They inspire, explain, and direc