Progressismus gallicus in French and Belgian relationes ad limina from 1947 to 1957

The Church of Pius XII was faced with the major problem of secularisation that accompanied the modernisation of European society. In the post-World War II Catholic world, France and Belgium were pioneers in seeking new pastoral methods that could reach out and involve, in particular, the workers, that social class which was most sensitive to the dynamics of de-Christianisation and religious indifferentism. The relationes ad limina of the period allow us to reconstruct a lively and innovative ecclesial landscape, within which the experience of worker priests was the best-known and most debated... Mehr ...