In this article Marguerite Fievez, one time Secretary to Cardijn speaks of him as indescribable, full of intuitions and contradictions, always having new dreams while keeping his feet firmly on the ground. He would produce totally unexpected innovations and yet practised self-discipline in his life and work He thought on a planetary level, giving attention to little things yet concerned about the most abandoned of the human race, to which he consecrated his life.
In 1961 Romeo Maione then President of the International YCW began an article on the founder of the YCW with the question “Where is Cardijn?”. It’s a fact that the age of the great intercontinental journeys opened up before him, after the Second World war. Without leaving his pre-occupation with the building up of the movement in Europe, Cardijn began an endless series of journeys throughout the world right up to his death in 1967. His first exclamation to a few young workers whom he brought together in Laeken in 1912 now became his daily bread; “If you have the faith we will go out and conquer the world”. A vast display, electronically controlled which reconstructs the 24 intercontinental trips undertaken by Cardijn, at the time a record, opened to the public last November in Tourneppe near Brussels.
From 1928 Cardijn lived on the second floor of the head office of the YCW-90 Rue des Palais in Brussels. That room had something sacred about it, for it was there that he elaborated his thoughts and drew up his plans for action. For as long as he was able he rose at 6.00 am every morning, spent long periods in silent prayer which enabled him to accomplish something essential to his daily routine, to see the reality of the life of young workers and of the YCW according to God’s view of things, namely the search for interior unity in action. He would then celebrate the Eucharist with the national officials of the Movement before going to the Common-dining room for an informal exchange of ideas whilst eating a rather British breakfast of “eggs and bacon”.
He began his daily work at 8.30 am glancing through seven or eight national daily newspapers marking various passages for special attention. If he was forcibly struck by some he immediately wrote his reactions. Many of these issues he would write about in the editorials of the Belgian Daily “La Cité” which he helped to found in 1950. The ‘phone very often interrupted his reading and then it was one task after another meetings to arrange and attend, letters to be answered, articles to be written, a visitor to be seen, preparations for an assembly, or a more thorough reflection on a subject requested by someone preparing a study-session.
Cardijn ate little. After eating his mid-day meal in less than fifteen minutes, he took a short siesta, followed by strong coffee, and would resume work at his desk until supper time. His evenings were given over to meeting others, to weekly dialogue with chaplains, and as often as possible he spent long period of reading with the help of a cigar! His timetable had a thousand variations foreseen and unforeseen. On countless occasions Cardijn, clothed in an old overcoat, spent his days visiting YCW groups, or regional federations. His weekends too were full of engagements as this was the best time to meet young workers who were free from their work. At these meetings Cardijn would passionately give his great “firework display” of oratory.
Cardijn always lived like this. Even in 1920 he would be seen travelling the length and breadth of Belgium where he came to know every town and village, every working class area including the most heavily populated and the poorest. In those days he was accompanied by Jacques Meert carrying under his arms a bundle of slides to be projected by a rudimentary slide machine showing the multiple aspects of the workers’ life. The evening was spent in a cafe or parish group and was the starting point for making people aware of the problems of young workers. In 1969,600 of these slides were found of which many depicted the English industry and working class at the beginning of this century.
Cardijn would arrive home very late at night exhausted. He would climb wearily to his room. He was happy, for in spite of the many problems he encountered during his day he felt that was his mission. Tomorrow he would start again for that was the price he paid for the salvation of working youth. Few people knew him in this daily routine. What most marked the public opinion of him was his talent as a speaker. Active members of the movement of the day followed him as their master, someone unequalled in educating them for life.
The depths of his personality, however, went far beyond his talents exceptional though these may have been. He was naturally very impassioned and could give the impression of an overpowering personality – some even spoke of “Personality Cult” – but beneath all this lay Cardijn’s thinking process which was always plugged into concrete reality. For him it was supremely important to observe the facts of life and never to deny them. They were like headlights which showed the way to follow, after prior reflection.
His famous method of enquiry and education See-Judge-Act, was the permanent expression of this attitude. In meetings he listened carefully to everyone. He listened again and again taking copious notes which allowed him to assimilate what even the smallest of his contacts were living. It was starting from these facts that he would reflect, come to a conclusion and then take an initiative and throw himself into a project which was often unexpected.
Being a realist did not mean he was a fatalist. He had an iron faith in what young workers could accomplish and become. He followed a dream, a utopia, yet he believed that all obstacles could be overcome. He fought them, got round them and overcame them. Even while on his death-bead, given up by the doctors, he was still trying to find a way to be taken to Paris to greet the Congress (being head) to celebrate the 40th Anniversary of the French Movement.
This man who dreamt day and night knew the value of money and time, those precious goods, servants of the Kingdom of God. He knew too the value of work and methodical effort. His speeches which poured out to him like a torrent were never improvised. In the silence of his office he meditated for hours working out the content of what he was going to say. He forced himself to make many rough drafts, forever correcting, improving and completing them. Thus we found in a bundle of loose papers many versions of his “Heure de la Classe ouvrière” (The hour of the working class) which he delivered in 1948 during the study week in Godinne. The marks and additions in red pencil cover dozens of pages.
He was never satisfied, either for himself nor for others. Take the preparations for his journeys, for example – and especially of those to Rome. They were prepared with the greatest of care, touching on the fanatical; requesting audiences, proposing rendezvous, drawing up explanatory note justifying his requests and sending them on in advance, making lists of addresses of his numerous contacts even to the last telephone number, preparing the list of postcards which he intended sending to his friends. He demanded a job well done of each person and one finished on time.
He made secretaries perspire!!! In fact when it came to work and our daily responsibilities Cardijn made limitless demands on us – proof of unlimited confidence in us. At times we clamoured for more indulgence on his part, even more humanity. But at the end of the day it was we who benefited. Through these demands we have become what we are today.
This fidelity to the reality of life, is doubtless a part of that spirituality made up of humility and poverty which was the hallmark of Cardijn. His own origins rooted him in the world of the poor. How often he was heard to explain in an assembly of the Women’s YCW, “My mother was a poor servant girl”. He lived without etiquette and without a salary, content with a threadbare soutan, and an off-patched jersey until the day when one of us noticed it with much remorse.
All he ever had in his wallet were a few hundred francs. His last will stated it once and for all. “I have always wanted to be poor and to live poor without owning anything for myself. The means at my disposition have never been for me anything other than the instrument for developing the YCW and for serving the young workers of the world”.
Going beyond the interpretation of poverty which reigned in the seminaries of the beginning of this century, his idea of it was neither individualistic or spiritualistic. What does the “Ideal of poverty” mean if it does not first give way to the immense multitude of human beings who survive in deprivation. For Cardijn the only evangelical way was the justice which shares out one’s goods and which transforms the structures of society. In 1912 this was a novel idea. It was with this spirit that he chose the most vulnerable members of society – the young workers
he never spoke to them about money or high positions, but about their greatest riches hidden in the depth of their being, which no-one could take from them, namely their dignity as sons and daughters of God. To give that dignity back to them was Cardijn’s mission until his death. It was his original and positive way of responding to the stringent demands of the Gospel.
No one was a witness to his anguish when Pope Paul VI made him a Cardinal of the Church This honour he thought would make him a Bishop without a diocese and he imagined that he would be called to live in Rome as a member of the Curia. He feared the formal and pompous style of life that Rome would impose on him. Through dialogue with Pope Paul V1 he declared “but if I must come to Rome and work in your offices, you will bring about my death”. The Pope replied with firmness, “I’m not making you a Cardinal to bring about your death, but to make you come alive. You will be Cardinal of young workers of the world.”
The new Roman dignitary returned to Brussels. He kept silent for several days and reflected on his life in the light of the promise he has made to his father on his death-bed. What now was to be his motto? After reflecting for a long time he copied in his little shortsighted handwriting on a big blank page, “the spirit of the Lord is upon me, he has sent me to proclaim the good news to the poor, to proclaim to prisoners their freedom and set the oppressed free” – “evangleizare Pauplesibus”. Luke IV 18.
As one deepens one’s reflection on what this extraordinary man was, one soon realises that his life had only one central axis to which was attached his whole behaviour and the attitudes he adopted – the young workers must be saved – for him that’s all that mattered. On his death-bed he declared, “I offer my life for the Young Workers of the World”.
It was in 1946 that he discovered the misery of the Latin American masses, the shock of so much poverty burned into his heart. He returned home and threw up into Europe’s face that terrible word which he invented “under-development” – for him the YCW of every country was to see itself in the apocalyptic vision and follow him in denouncing this pest which had been so well hidden from the public eye. And so he opened up a breach in the social and political landscape of the world after the second world war. His commitment would follow similar lines as Vietnam suffered the martyrdom of war. He cried to one journalist, “War is an anachronism”, and he proposed to 4,000 workers of a Belgian armaments factory to show their solidarity by demanding the closure of their factory and look for work elsewhere.
I think on the final analysis that this portrait is not important. The essential task is to carry on
today the eternal mission to which he consecrated his existence.
Marguerite Fiévez
SOURCE
Marguerite Fiévez, Cardijn The Man, New Life, Review of the Social Apostolate, Vol. 47, No. 4, 1992. (CARHOP)