Pope Pius XI famously lamented to Cardijn about the loss of the working class in March 1925. Pius XI said to me: “Sit down there”. And when I was seated, he asked me: “Well, what do you want?” I answered him exclaiming: “Holy Father, I want to kill myself to save young people and the working class.” And it was the turn of Pius to exclaim: “At last, someone who wants to kill himself to save the working class.”… And then, as he did so often subsequently as if he was before a crowd of a thousand people, he continued: “Yes, it is necessary to kill oneself to save the working world. Not just the elite but the mass. The elite is the leaven, and the elite are the multipliers. The Church needs the working class… Without the working class, the Church is not the Church of Christ… Every young worker has an infinite value… etc. Yes, kill yourself to bring them back to the Church. The greatest scandal of the nineteenth century is that the Church lost the working class. I bless you, I support you. Your movement is not your movement, it’s mine, it belongs to the Church. Whoever touches it touches the apple of my eye.”
A new Pentecost in Australia
A new Pentecost in Australia
A new Pentecost in Australia
Pope Pius XI famously lamented to Cardijn about the loss of the working class in March 1925. Pius XI said to me: “Sit down there”. And when I was seated, he asked me: “Well, what do you want?” I answered him exclaiming: “Holy Father, I want to kill myself to save young people and the working class.” And it was the turn of Pius to exclaim: “At last, someone who wants to kill himself to save the working class.”… And then, as he did so often subsequently as if he was before a crowd of a thousand people, he continued: “Yes, it is necessary to kill oneself to save the working world. Not just the elite but the mass. The elite is the leaven, and the elite are the multipliers. The Church needs the working class… Without the working class, the Church is not the Church of Christ… Every young worker has an infinite value… etc. Yes, kill yourself to bring them back to the Church. The greatest scandal of the nineteenth century is that the Church lost the working class. I bless you, I support you. Your movement is not your movement, it’s mine, it belongs to the Church. Whoever touches it touches the apple of my eye.”