University of Notre Dame
Archives

Young Christian Workers Records

1938-1971

Origination : Young Christian Workers
Extent : 90 linear feet 10 linear inches of photographs
Repository : University of Notre Dame Archives
Address : Notre Dame, Indiana 46556
English.

Administrative Information

Source

Gift of Patty Crowley and Monsignor Reynold Hillenbrand.

Preferred Citation

Young Christian Workers Records (YCW), University of Notre Dame Archives (UNDA), Notre Dame, IN 46556

Scope and Content

Correspondence of national headquarters with local YCW groups all over the United States; subject files, training courses, answers to survey questionnaires, financial records, reports, inquiry programs, manuals, mimeographed material, pamphlets, periodicals, photographs, and papers of national chaplain Monsignor Reynold Hillenbrand and Caroline Pezzullo, president of the women's YCW, 1949-1953; with material on civil rights, credit unions, labor unions, Catholic Action, and the international Jocist (Young Christian Workers) movement founded by Canon Joseph Cardijn.

Background

An organization of the Catholic lay apostolate for young working people; it had parallel organizations for men and women, a national headquarters, and local groups of leaders who would meet to read scripture, discuss and judge what they had observed in the workplace or neighborhood, and decide how to act to make their community more Christian, according to the teachings of papal encyclicals urging Catholic social action.

The Young Christian Workers organization is the American branch of the Jeunesse Ouvriere Chretienne, an organization founded by Joseph Cardijn, a Flemish Belgian priest who was elevated to the College of Cardinals by Pope Paul VI in 1965. The movement,which grew out of Cardijn's interest in young workers, was officially launched in 1924.

In 1938, Msgr. Donald Kanaly organized the first American cell in Ponca City, Oklahoma. Other groups using the "observe, judge, act" method appeared in Chicago, San Francisco, Detroit, and San Antonio. The movements gained added impetus after World War II, when a national headquarters was established in Chicago following the 1947 International YCW Congress held in Montreal. The name of the organization was changed to Young Christians Movement in 1965.

Index

Young Christian Workers
Catholic action
Civil rights
Credit unions
Trade unions
Jeunesse Ouvrière Chrètienne

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