It’s been a busy last couple of months with a series of celebrations of the Centenary of the foundation of the Young Christian Workers in 1925.
But, as International YCW president, Basma Louis, noted in her opening address at the Centenary service at Notre Dame church, Laeken, on 1 May 2025, Cardijn actually began organising young workers in that parish from 1912 when he was appointed as a curate in the parish.
Indeed, in the course of my research into his life and the origins of the YCW, I have been struck by how often Cardijn insisted that the history of the movement needed to begin in 1912.
Cardijn’s own YCW
Reflecting on this, I realised that the study circles for young workers, particularly teenage girls, that Cardijn launched there with his collaborators were the ONLY YCW teams that he created and worked with himself.
The corollary of this was that every other YCW team around the world since then was launched by someone else.
No wonder then that he wanted people to know how he himself had started the YCW in the parish of Our Lady of Laeken.
A golden legend
Sadly, as he noted in a 1958 note entitled “The first worker apostles,” the story of this “golden legend,” as he characterised it himself, was never written down.
Except in the few lines that he recorded himself and that I reproduce here:
- The most fundamental characteristic of the beginnings of the YCW (before the First World War) was the call to an apostolate, a total and complete apostolate for several young women workers who would train and raise up the others.
- This call manifested itself as a result of the most demanding spiritual direction, a very active rule of life (meditation, prayer, mass, communion), by recollections, retreats, vigils, the deepest doctrinal studies (study circles, talks, reports).
- It would be necessary to find the texts of those first recollections and retreats as well as the personal notebooks. It was a revelation at the Cenacle [retreat house] where for the first time young women workers made a retreat in great silence without surveillance. One would be astonished at the possibilities and the generosity.
- It was also the time of great apostolic demands and of great apostolic commitments: leaving a “good job” for a workshop, a factory, a dirty, repugnant, sub-human job; accepting to share meals with women workers in the workshops of factories making rabbit fur, rubber, artificial silk; orgoing to live in an attic in Rue Haute [High Street] in the midst of an environment of prostitution.
- The story of this “golden legend” has never been written down. However, it is the only explanation for the extraordinary power of the YCW, the YCW [jociste] mystique. I believe that it is the essential condition of the true worker revolution. Without it, we are doomed to bourgeoisification [s’embourgeoiser]: this is perhaps the greatest present danger. Chaplains must become conscious of it. We need to provoke a redemptive shock.
Jos. Cardijn
Here, we see how Cardijn started with what he described as a call to “a complete and total apostolate for several young women workers.”
These young women, who deserve to be remembered, included Alice Willems, Rosalie Machiels, Marie Guldickx, Sidonie Vanderjeugd, Julia Delauw and Jeanne Evenepoel.
Indeed, a number of these early young worker leaders did go on to dedicate their whole lives to the YCW and the worker movement.
A demanding formation
What’s also particularly notable is the way in which Cardijn sought to form those young worker leaders by means of “the most demanding spiritual direction” and “a very active rule of life” that included meditation, prayer, Mass and communion) as well as recollections, retreats and vigils (collective prayer sessions on the eve of important religious feasts).
On top of this, he organised “advanced doctrinal studies” by means of “study circles, talks and reports.”
This demanding formation took place alongside or in parallel with the see-judge-act enquiries into the lives of young workers that those leaders also undertook.
In addition to this spiritual formation, Cardijn also made “great apostolic demands” on those young workers, challenging them to go and take up the worst jobs in the worst locations in order to be with the young workers the movement was seeking to reach and organise.
The danger of bourgeoisification
For Cardijn, this demanding formation was the key to the Golden Legend of the origin of the YCW. He described it as “the essential condition of the true worker revolution.”
“Without it, we are doomed to the bourgeoisification (of the movement),” he wrote.
The word Cardijn used in French was “embourgoisement” which literally means “bourgeoisification” but could today perhaps be better translated as “gentrification” or possibly “professionalisation.”
Writing in 1958 – only a year or less after the First International Council of the YCW in Rome in August 1957 – he warned that this was “perhaps the greatest present danger.”
In fact, I’ve found Belgian and French JOC documents going back as far as 1936 warning of this danger of bourgeoisification.
Before that even, in 1908, Henry du Roure, secretary-general of the French movement, Le Sillon, from which the YCW borrowed so much, himself warned of this danger:
In a beautiful passage he wrote:
Ayons le courage et le bon sens de maintenir à notre oeuvre le caractère de la pauvreté et du renoncement. Nous ne pouvons atteindre à la logique admirable des vies monastiques. Il nous faut l’imprévu de la vie du siècle, des efforts brusques suivis de longues détentes, et, par instants, une naïve impression d’héroisme. Tout cela est humain, c’est à notre portée, mais c’est encore bon et beau.
Il faut nous demander les uns aux autres et nous imposer à nous-mêmes de ne pas trop bien organiser le Sillon, de ne pas assagir le Sillon, de ne pas embourgeoiser le Sillon. Qu’il reste une chose un peu folle, héroïque si l’on veut. Par lui il vaut mieux être broyé que gavé. Que les corps soient rudoyés pour que les âmes restent pures.
It’s better in French but here’s my English translation:
Let’s have the courage and good sense to maintain the character of poverty and renunciation in our work. The admirable logic of monastic life is beyond us. We need the unexpectedness of daily life, short, abrupt efforts followed by long slower periods, and, at times, a naive impression of heroism. All this is human, it’s within our reach, but it’s still good and beautiful.
We need to demand of each other and impose on ourselves not to organise the Sillon too well, not to tame the Sillon, not to bourgeoisify it. Let it remain an endeavour that’s a little crazy, heroic if you like. It is better to be ground down by it rather than spoiled. Let our bodies be battered in order that our souls remain pure.
Here, I think, Henry du Roure captures very well the danger of bourgeoisification that Cardijn himself feared.
A redemptive shock
Chaplains needed to become aware of this danger and to combat it by provoking what he called “a redemptive shock,” Cardijn said. The way to do this was to seriously challenge YCW leaders.
Looking back at the immense commitment and sacrifice of those first worker apostles, we can see clearly what this meant.
Although I have witnessed tremendous sacrifices among the YCW leaders whom I’ve known, I also have to concede that the formation Cardijn proposed at Laeken in 1912 goes well beyond anything I’ve ever witnessed.
Perhaps, by remembering the formation and the example of those pioneer young worker apostles at Laeken, we may also come to experience the kind of “redemptive shock” that Cardijn sought to provoke.
Stefan Gigacz
REFERENCES
Joseph Cardijn, The first worker apostles (Joseph Cardijn Digital Library)
Henry du Roure, La beauté morale du Sillon (Sillon.net)