From Easter to New Pentecost

Cardijn with Patrick Keegan at Vatican II

Easter greetings to all CCI members and friends.

There is so much to celebrate this year, beginning with the centenary of Cardijn beginning work in the parish of Our Lady of Laeken.

This year also marks the centenary of the foundation of the first YCW group, an event celebrated by the IYCW.

And it also the 50th anniversary of the opening of the Second Vatican Council at which Cardijn played such an important yet largely hidden role.

CCI will commemorate this important event by launching a three year program to study Cardijn's role at the Council and the Church's social commitment to lay apostolate.

We will hold an opening conference on the theme "Vatican 2+ 50: A Cardijn Perspective"  from 11-14 October 2012 to be held at the Pius XII Center in Manila, Philippines.

Join us for this important event.

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Christmas and New Year greetings

Dear CCI Friends,

Christmas and New Year greetings to all as we gather with our families and closest friends!

Let us also spare a special thought and prayer for those who are separated from their loved one. I am thinking in particular of former Thailand YCW fulltimer and labor activist, Somyot Pruksakasemsuk, who is now in prison while on trial over lese majeste charges. We also remember his family who have now been separated from their husband and father for eight months.

At this time we also think of former IYCW chaplain, Fr RV Mathias, who passed away just a few weeks ago. In fact, at the request of some former YCWs in India, we have now launched a memorial website www.rvmathias.com to commemorate his life and work. We hope to make the development of this site a participative project and so we will be pleased to receive your testimonies and photos for posting on the site.

We also learned recently of the death of former Brazil and American YCW chaplain, Fr Agostino Pretto, who played an important role in the movement during the 1970s.

This year also saw the death of another former YCW chaplain and liberation theologian, Belgian-born Fr Jose Comblin, who spend most of his priestly working in Brazil.

Another CCI friend to pass on this year was Thai Bishop Bunluen Mansap, who died in January aged 81.

We remember and give thanks for their sacrifices on behalf of the poor and workers around the world.

2011 has also been an important year for the development of the Cardijn Community with the 3rd CCI General Assembly in July which also marked the 10th anniversary of our foundation in 2001.

CCI India also held its General Assembly in Chennai in August where it was decided to develop a campaign on internal migration.

Meanwhile, the Cardijn Community Australia focused on the history of the Cardijn movements in Australia at its November conference.

New initiatives have also begun in the Philippines, Sri Lanka and elsewhere.

2012 is also shaping up to be an important year for CCI with the launch of our three project to commemorate the 50th anniversary of Vatican II.

We thank you for being with us this year and invite you once again to join us in our mission to promote the spirituality and methodology of Joseph Cardijn.

Stefan Gigacz

President/Convenor CCI on behalf of the CCI International Team

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Newsletter launch

Dear Friends, Already a month has passed since our General Assembly and 10th Anniversary in Bangkok.

I hope that we can build on the legacy that Ruben left us in his role as convenor and also the team before him, particularly Rungrote whom you met in Bangkok and "Jim" Rungtip Imrunguang who was a key member of our first CCI or CLC team as it was then. It is really a pity that she was unable to join us as she was in Laos for another conference during our event.

Now I guess we are all trying to see best how we can work to implement the plans that we made in Bangkok.

One of the things that we decided was to launch a newsletter and so I have compiled this bulletin to share with you some of what has been happening.

Developments in CCI

Even before he returned to Zambia, Clement Katongo was making plans to launch an event in Africa, i.e. Zambia to mark the 50th anniversary of Vatican II. If everything goes to plan, this would be held in late 2012. We look forward to hearing of more plans.

From Sri Lanka, Fr Reid has already held a meeting on 13 August to launch a Sri Lankan chapter of CCI with about 8 people present and plans for regular monthly meetings.

From Australia, Kevin has been in contact with Cardinal Tom Williams, retired archbishop of Wellington, New Zealand, who gave a speech to 300 former YCW and YCS members from NZ at a 1996 event. Hopefully, we will soon be in contact with some of those people.

From India, we have heard that the National Team met last week. Paul and Rebecca Sinappan are in fact on their way to India today for a personal visit and will meet with Ruben and other CCI leaders there.

From the Philippines, Juanito has informed us of plans to establish a Treasurer's Team to manage the finances. The Manila CCI group has also fixed a meeting for 11 September.

So already lots of things are starting to happen!

CCI Websites

Meanwhile, I have been working here in Kuala Lumpur, mostly on developing the CCI websites.

News

www.cardijn.info: This is our news website, publishing news item relating not only to CCI but to all the Cardijn movements and dealing also with lay apostolate, worker issues, etc. I have updated much of the background information and started to reorganise the site to fit in better with our needs.

www.cardijn.fr: This is our newsite in French which is similar to www.cardijn.info

Community

www.cardijncommunity.org: This website focuses on our own CCI organisation, activities etc. I have already posted up an initial online draft report of our General Assembly. There is still material to be added - and above all photos - please let me know if you have photos that we can add. Also, please let me know of any other suggestions that you have for content.

Campaigns

www.vatican2plus50.com: This also is a brand new website on which I have started as a resource centre for our 50th anniversary of Vatican II project. As you can see, there are already quite a number of resources available there. Please send in suggestions for more development.

www.newpentecost.com: This is our existing website for our annual New Pentecost activities which have been held each year since 2005 in various countries - sometimes big, sometimes small. This was a follow up to our original Vatican 2 + 40 program in 2002 to mark the 40th anniversary of Vatican II.

Resources

www.josephcardijn.com: This is our website for publishing documents by and concerning the life of Joseph Cardijn.

www.josephcardijn.fr hosts the Cardijn documents in the original French.

https://sites.google.com/a/cardijn.info/cardijn-resources/: This is the Cardijn Resources website for other Cardijn related resources. This will be revamped shortly, I hope.

As you will also see the websites are all linked to each other thru the top menu bar on each site.

Feedback

Already the sites are attracting over 1000 visits per month and hopefully this will grow as people discover the range of resources that are available.

Only this week I had a message from Dr Bernard D'Sami, CCI member from India, and also professor of history at Loyola College, Chennai: "You have really opened the floodgates of Cardijn's resources. These are the primary sources to study and understand Cardijn and his times and work. Somehow it should reach at least some academics who are connected in someway or other with Cardijn's movement, So that some serious research could be undertaken by some serious social science researchers. More and more young men and women should be exposed to these treasures. I will certainly make use of these resources to involve some to undertake research based on the original documents and materials relating to the life and work of the Cardijn. Great work done! Congratulations."

This is a really great encouragement and I hope we can keep going.

World Youth Day

You would have also noticed that Sunday was World Youth Day in Spain with Pope Benedict. And I was able to publish online the Marguerite Fievez and Jacques Meert biography of Cardijn as a kind of contribution for World Youth Day:

http://www.josephcardijn.com/latest-news/readcardijnsbiographyonline-1

It is also interesting to note that the next World Youth Day will be held in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, in 2013 - only two years away. Some of you will know that Cardijn had a tremendous influence in Brazil through the YCW, YCS, University YCS, and other Catholic Action movements. Wouldn't it be great if we could find a way to make sure that Cardijn is on the agenda for World Youth Day Brazil?

Lots of work to do!

Anyway, there's lots of work to do! But let's start simply!

All the best
Stefan Gigacz
CCI President/Convenor
Foundation Day of the International YCW

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Countdown to conference

Less than a week to go to our 10th anniversary conference to be held from 23-25 July in Bangkok, Thailand.

We are pleased to say that we have 48 participants enrolled and we expect it to be a very significant event for the development of the CCI network.

Keynote speaker will be Father Antoine Sondag, former international chaplain of the IYCS and of Pax Romana-ICMICA.

We are also happy to say that IYCW international president Ms Geethani Peries will also join us.

More details will follow over the next few days.

Stefan Gigacz, CCI Secretary

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Join us for the CCI 10th anniversary

Just a quick reminder to our readers that the CCI 10th Anniversary International Forum and General Assembly is approaching rapidly.

It will be held from 23-25 July 2011 in Bangkok, Thailand.

Thirty five people have already signed up for the event.

More information and enrolment form available here.

Look forward to seeing you there!

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Welcome to the new Cardijn.info!

Welcome to the new Cardijn.info website created using the Wordpress platform.

We expect that it will be much easier to update our site using Wordpress and thus hope to provide even more frequent news of and about Cardijn, the Cardijn movements and all those who adhere to the Cardijn spirituality and methodology.

This is the fourth major version of our website since 2002.

You can find the most recent website here with all of our news from 2008-2010: https://sites.google.com/a/cardijn.info/ccinews/Home

This site was hosted as a google site and there were many advantages. But in the end Wordpress offers more flexibility.

Thanks to the Internet Wayback Machine, an online archiving service, you can even visit some of our earlier websites.

Here is our site as it was in 2002:

http://replay.waybackmachine.org/20020926050429/http://www.cardijn.info/

Actually, they have mixed up a couple of images - there were 2 versions, one in blue, one in maroon. Somehow the images have been mixed - but the effect is good.

And this is how it should have looked:

We also had a wiki version of the website which unfortunately does not reproduce very well in the Wayback machine. But you can see some of the content.

Check them all out here: http://replay.waybackmachine.org/20090605184625/http://www.cardijn.info/

What's more here is what our predecessor site looked like back in 1999 hosted at www.cardijn.net

Well, we hope we have improved over the years and we look forward to further improvement in the future.

Meanwhile, read on...

Stefan Gigacz

on behalf of the

CCI Coordination Team

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Welcoming 2011 – CCI 10th Anniversary Year

We are happy to announce that the first CCI event of 2011 has been a great success.

CCI India has just completed its Youth for Change National Conference in Goa. Read the report and the Goa Declaration here.

CCI Convenor MJ Ruben reports that 60 young people and animators attended the gathering from many regions of India, including Mumbai, Jharkhand, Patna, Jamshedpur, Hyderabad, Kanniyakumari. Chennai, Guntur, Pune, Udaipur, Goa, Nagpur, Gujarat, Bangalore and Tuticorin.

“Fantastic response,” Ruben writes.” Never expected the youth to be so responsive and attentive.”

This year is also another year of Cardijn centenaries. In a few months, we will mark the hundredth anniversary of Cardijn’s visit to London to meet the English trade union leaders, particularly Ben Tillett of the Dockers Union who had so much impact on his conception of the future YCW.

Read Cardijn’s report of this momentous trip here in English or here in the original French.

Events

There will be some major events for CCI coming up this year, notably our 10th centenary of our foundation as the Cardijn Liaison Committee at a Network for Development conference in Bangkok in July 2001.

We plan to celebrate this anniversary and make plans for the coming years at our International Forum and General Assembly once again in Bangkok on 23-24 July 2011. More details here and hope you can join us.

Also coming up this year is a major conference to be held by the Cardijn Community Australia to be held in Melbourne from 4-6 November at the Archdiocesan Centre and the Catholic Theological College. We will have publish more details as they become available.

New resources

Latest items on our Cardijn Resources website include a link to a video of the 1957 Pilgrimage to Rome made by British Pathe.

Don’t hesitate to contact us with news of other video resources to include in our list.

Also published on the Cardijn Documents site is Cardijn’s 1956 speech to English and Welsh YCW chaplains, Quaerite Primum – Seek First. It is a tour de force of Cardijn’s basic philosophy and method and is one of the few published texts that were originally delivered in English.

Here also is a link to the announcement by Marc Sangnier of the closure of Le Sillon, the magazine of the French Sillon movement, which was the major precursor to the Cardijn movements. It was the closure of the Sillon which opened the door to the emergence of the YCW.

What Cardijn thought about all this can also be found in this short article, 25 août: L’héritage du Sillon et la JOC, that I wrote for the French magazine, Les Cahiers de l’Atelier.

Meanwhile, all the best for 2011 from the CCI Team.

Stefan Gigacz

for the CCI Team

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