Working for the Young Christian Workers (YCW) in Australia and internationally during the 1980s and 1990s gave me the opportunity to visit twenty countries across Asia, the Pacific, Europe, Africa, and the Americas.
In many of those places, YCW leaders and alumni told me the same troubling story: properties – offices, campsites, training centers – that had once belonged to the movement had simply disappeared from their hands.
Lost property
On one memorable occasion in West Africa, I was chatting with a former leader on the doorstep of the humble brick building that currently served as the movement’s centre. YCW leaders had built it themselves, he told me proudly.
Then he pointed to another building further up the street, which now housed a pharmacy.
“See that building?” he said. “That was the previous YCW office. The Church provided the land and we constructed the building. But then the archbishop decided he wanted it. He asked us to move out and gave us another piece of land where we built this current office.”
The archdiocese then proceeded to rent out the original YCW building to the pharmacy. Needless to say, this caused deep resentment – especially among the YCW alumni who had contributed their own time and hard-earned money to build it.
I heard similar stories nearly everywhere I went.
In a Southeast Asian country, YCW leaders welcomed me to a ramshackle office with peeling walls. It sat just across the way from a much larger building named after Joseph Cardijn, which the YCW founder himself had blessed during his final visit to Asia in 1966. Appropriately, both the YCW and the Young Christian Students (YCS) movements originally had their offices there.
But as the youth movements weakened, pressure mounted to hand over space to other Church groups. In a supreme irony, one of the groups pressuring them to give up their space was the local Church agency for justice and peace.
“You don’t need so much space anymore,” the leaders were told, “but we do.”
Using what amounted to a salami slicing tactic, more and more space was gradually carved away. Being young, the YCW leaders felt unable to resist the moral pressure. Eventually, they found themselves banished to what was little more than a dilapidated storeroom, which, presumably, they were expected to renovate themselves.
In South America, I learned of an even more galling case. Several Cardijn-inspired youth movements had obtained land from a parish to construct a combined headquarters. Financial assistance was sought and granted from European Catholic development agencies in France, Belgium, and elsewhere.
Shortly after construction finished, the archbishop appointed a new parish priest, who decided he needed the property for other purposes. An appeal to the archbishop fell on deaf ears; even formal letters from European donor agencies stating the explicit purpose of their grants failed to move him.
In desperation, the movements sent a representative to Rome to explore legal options. He later told me that he visited the office of the Holy See’s highest court, the Apostolic Signatura. The staff initially didn’t know what to do with him, but eventually arranged a meeting with a resident monsignor.
After listening sympathetically, the monsignor simply advised them to seek a resolution “in the spirit of the Gospel.” The representative left frustrated and disappointed, knowing how hollow such advice was- a fear that proved entirely justified. Moreover, not only did the movements lose their building, but the European agencies that funded it were placed in legal jeopardy back home due to strict domestic charity laws governing the use of donated funds.
In many of the countries that I visited, former YCWs would tell similar stories of the YCW assets that had been lost.
Australia
These cases were not isolated to developing nations. Similar stories exist right here in Australia.
As a boy in the 1960s, I remember accompanying my late father to a Saturday working bee at our parish, Sacred Heart in St Albans, Victoria. He was helping the young YCW leaders of the time – many of them apprentice tradies – build what became known as the “YCW Hall.” It served both the movement and the parish until the mid-1970s, when the YCW folded locally. Soon after, the parish handed the building over to the newly established Catholic Regional College.
Evidently, no thought was ever given to the possibility that the YCW might one day reform and need that space again.
Later, as a worker for the Australian YCW in the early 1980s, I traveled to Newcastle and visited the diocesan grounds near Sacred Heart Cathedral. I was stunned to see a Church building with a massive YCW logo embossed in bas-relief on its concrete wall. By that time, however, the local bishop, Leo Clark, had banned the YCW in the diocese. Years later, I learned the diocese had sold off the property entirely.
I also recall stumbling across an online post about twenty years ago from a former YCW member in North Queensland, lamenting that a building once bought and built by the YCW had been turned into a local crèche.
Bit by bit, the movement’s physical heritage was erased.
Canon law
What does Church law actually say about these takings?
The 1983 Code of Canon Law is surprisingly clear. Canon 1267 §3 explicitly states:
“Offerings given by the faithful for a certain purpose can be applied only for that same purpose.”
And yet in none of the cases that I have mentioned or that I know of have Church authorities acted to ensure that those properties built by and or for the use of the YCW continued to be used for that purpose or even similar purposes.
Canon law has been totally ignored by those authorities whose duty is not just to follow canon law but to ensure its application.
Furthermore, Canons 1291–1295 specify that Church property cannot be alienated without following a stringent legal process, meeting strict conditions, and securing explicit permission from competent authorities.
The fundamental problem for a youth movement like the YCW is that its canonical status within a diocese was often vague. Moreover, a youth movement is inherently less stable than a religious order; its membership fluctuates, and local chapters may disappear for years before being reborn.
Civil law and institutional vulnerability
In addition to canonical ambiguity, many countries historically lacked solid legal frameworks for voluntary associations.
In Australia, for example, our most populous eastern states (Victoria, Queensland, and New South Wales) only adopted formal laws for the incorporation of associations during the 1980s. Prior to the Associations Incorporation Act 1981 in Victoria, even professional football clubs in the Victorian Football League (VFL now AFL) operated as unincorporated voluntary associations, giving rise to endless legal headaches.
If professional sports leagues struggled with this, the problem was exponentially worse for a youth movement lacking institutional longevity and legal resources.
Consequently, movements like the YCW and YCS almost always operated under the umbrella and property titles of local Church structures. As long as the local bishop or parish priest remained sympathetic, this setup worked. But it built a systemic flaw: young leaders frequently erected premises on Church land without formal contracts, title deeds, or documented proof of who provided the funds.
Witnessing these unjust dispossessions firsthand during my years with the movement was actually one of the key factors that eventually drove me to study canon law myself.
Yet, even with that knowledge, the reality remains stark. As the old legal adage goes, “Possession is nine-tenths of the law.” In most cases, it is extraordinarily difficult to assemble the paper trail proving the YCW’s historical financial contributions.
As a result, millions of dollars worth of property – fundraised and built through the sacrifices of young working people – has been lost to the movement, and in many cases, lost to the broader mission of the Church entirely.
Contrast this with an organisation like the Scout movement. By securing title to their own properties from the beginning, they have built and retained a massive global property portfolio – one that continues to ground and support their work with young people to this day.
Stefan Gigacz