SOCIAL AND RELIGIOUS CONTEXT

Spain, in the early 1930’s had an anticlerical and an anti-Christian government. Very militant, this government was encouraging the youth to be aggressive and atheistic in education and in family life. The Church was subtly attacked. The Young Men’s Catholic Action wanted to show the whole Spanish world that faith was still alive and could be influential in daily life. They decided that the great pilgrimage to Santiago de Compostela would be a visible way to oppose anti-Christian forces and consolidate and channel the Christian energy of the young people.

Confrontation between the Republicans and Nationalists in Spain led to the civil war of 1936-1939 in which more than 500,000 people died. Today Christians honour thousands of martyrs who died for their faith. After the civil war, dechristianisation was everywhere. It deprived the Church of a great number of her faithful. The situation underlined a blatant religious ignorance, a superficial Christian life too often bogged down into ritualism and external appearances. However, Christian charity governed some convinced Christians. In 1941, this deplorable situation touched the hearts of many young men who remained faithful to Christ and His message. They decided to work at transforming this society without Christ into one that was centred on Him. They reconnected with the ideal of the Young Men’s Catholic Action and asked themselves the question: “What should we do to become a leaven and to form Christians into instruments of the Gospel in the world today?”

THE MALLORCA EXPERIENCE

Of all the experiences during the preparation for the pilgrimage, one place took it with more seriousness with an “all out” attitude towards the “Cursillos”, the Spanish island of Mallorca, an island a little bit out of the Spanish mainstream. Throughout its history it was independent, occupied for four centuries by the Moors of North Africa, re-conquered by the Spaniards, then by the French to become an independent kingdom with its own language, Majorquin, half Catalan and half French. Mallorca, first Christian and then Muslim by invasion, reverted to Christianity. Many statues of the Blessed Mother buried during the Muslim occupation were rediscovered four hundred years later and became venerated on the island.

Around 1850, Mallorca experienced a great expansion of religious fervour due to the activities of the many saints, both men and women. Its faith deepened and took root through the light manifested in numerous charitable institutions. This very alive faith was sustained in Mallorca even during the 1930s in spite of the great pressures from the government to introduce atheism everywhere, especially in the education system. The civil war touched mainland Spain to a much greater degree.

A PROVIDENTIAL MAN

During Holy Week of 1943, a “cursillo” took place in Lluc. Eduardo Bonnin, a young man of 24, was a participant. Under the pressure of Jose Ferragut, an architect and one of his friends, he agreed to go. Eduardo came from a very Christian family of ten children. His father, an almond exporter, was afraid of the non-Christian influence prevalent even in the “so-called” catholic schools. His children received a good Christian education from a Christian tutor, closely supervised by him. Eduardo was, therefore, well protected from negative influences and anti-Christian education. His faith was deepened in a favourable environment. This gave to his family a priest and a Carmelite nun. In his teens, he began his compulsory military service which lasted for nine years.

During one of his holidays from the service he made his “cursillo” in Lluc. His experience in the army led him to discover that the heart of man is good and that love is its motor: love given and love received and accepted. He discovered also the value of friendship and its beauty through life in the military quarters. This marked him for the rest of his life. He discovered also that faith helps us to be more human and happier. The human search is unsatisfied without God. Therefore he came to Lluc with his Christian journey already begun.

The enthusiasm, the simplicity of the Christian message in all its fundamental elements such as the motivation to be leaven, the joy of sharing and depth of prayer opened his eyes and his heart to much more. The idea of pilgrimage led him to go beyond the pilgrimage to Santiago de Compostela to embrace the concept of the pilgrimage to the Father to which we are all invited. In his reflection, he wished that the “Cursillos” be opened to all, that it be centred on the basics of faith but with all the enthusiasm and the joy of being a disciple of Jesus Christ. He thought that a full week for a cursillo was impossible to most people. He suggested a three-day week-end instead. In his “cursillo” and in the days that followed, he deepened an idea in his heart to have a better world.

THE FIRST CURSILLO

Eduardo Bonnin was an articulate thinker, an apostle restless about a world without God, about unhappy people and Christians without joy. He was a Christian leader willing to conquer the world for Christ starting with himself.

In the Young Men’s Catholic Action of Mallorca he was in contact and in friendship with many other Christians like himself. Eduardo loved to meet other young people to reflect, to pray and to plan a way to make a more Christian world. He was convinced that the ignorance about faith was the source of a godless world. He invited six others to join him. Together they started a systematic study of the Gospels with assignments, under the supervision of Fr. Gabriel Segui, M.S.C. who corrected their homework every week. They felt that it was important to know Christ and His message better before speaking about Christ to others. The situation in the world and in the Church was worrying them. They decided to pray together by going to mass early in the morning. Moreover, knowing their environment was a key topic for their study, every Sunday, the seven friends cycled to a quiet place and under the leadership of Eduardo, each of them would sit under a tree and read a chapter from a book, either from a theologian or a sociologist, the leading Christian thinkers of their time. After a period of study, they would share together their discoveries. An apostolic action has to be well grounded to be efficient. Their favourite authors were Romano Guardini, Jacques Leclerc, Eves Cougar, Pierre Charles, Michele Federico Sciacca, Card, Suhbard, etc… To these they added philosophers, psychologists and sociologists. When one wants to do a good job, one must study well. Concurrently, the seven were involved in their faith in the name of Christ and in their own environments.

Cursillo, in its beginnings, was targeting those far away from God and the Church. In looking around, Eduardo and his friends noticed that all the practising Catholics were well taken care of spiritually. In their apostolic zeal, they saw that nobody cared about the ‘faraway’ so they decided that they would reach out to bring them to God. In their reflections on the person and the best means to reach them, they discovered that friendship, i.e. unconditional love for the other, was the way to the heart and to conversion. “Make a friend, be a friend, and bring our friend to Christ” is the strategy they followed. At the beginning the focus was to create a format for this weekend. The first rollo was already done: the study of environment. To permeate environments and make them Christian, they started to reflect on other topics to be developed so that a good in-depth survey of the truths of faith would be well covered, in order to bring true growth in faith and effective commitment to Christ.

On that first Cursillo, all the priests’ rollos were the same ones Eduardo heard on his “cursillo” in Catholic Action. The priest (Juan Julia) came for the spiritual rollos, mass and confessions and did not stay on the premises. The “retreat” part of Thursday night to Friday morning was added a few years later under the influence of Fr. Juan Capo. In the beginning all new Cursillistas were integrated right away into permanent group reunions to accelerate their permanent conversion and their spiritual growth. The success was tremendous. During the next several years, four more Cursillo weekends were held in various locations with Eduardo and his friends directing.

In January 1949, Bishop Juan Hervas, bishop of Palma de Mallorca, decided to open Cursillo to more people outside Catholic Action. On January 7-10, a Cursillo was held at the Hermitage of San Honorato. Eduardo explains. “In 1947, Bishop Juan Hervás, was appointed co-adjutor bishop of Mallorca. Up to that point in time his pastoral experience had been focused mainly on Catholic Action. He very soon became aware of our efforts and was very positive about what, in 1948, they already meant. The official support made it feasible that from 1949 on, many people who had formerly been unreachable for us could now become a part of the Cursillos in Christianity and it ceased to be a constant struggle. The better organization began to show and, amongst other things, due to the much greater frequency with which they were held, the weekends began to be numbered. It fell to me to be the rector of the first numbered Cursillo held in San Honorato and this weekend was carried out in exactly the same manner as the first one in Cala Figuera, in every aspect except for the first meditations which were given with a new approach by Father Juan Capo. His meditations were then incorporated into the Cursillo method.”

SOME SETBACKS

Eduardo continues: “Despite the success that the nascent Movement enjoyed after the arrival of Bishop Juan Hervás, there was much opposition from some of the clergy and conservative laypeople.

The private secretary of Monsignor Hervás, Fr. Bartolomé Miguel, who lived the religious phenomenon intensely because of his position, writes the following: “In the Christian life, all novelty produces a crisis of euphoria or of mistrust. In both cases, the crisis is always a moment of testing and of pain. Cursillo came to the peaceful island of Mallorca like a hurricane that lifted a dust cloud of comments, of mistrust and of renewed hopes. In the euphoria of the new experiment, next to the happy songs for the sheaves that were gathered into the barns of the Church, voices of alarm, of distrust, were not lacking.”

Part of the problem could have been the exuberance of the young Cursillistas that tended to offend those who could only cling to the tradition that they knew. In 1970 Juan Capo declared: “Our young age didn’t help us to be respectful or understanding. It hurt us that the illuminated passion of the young found nothing but gloomy and silent hostility, criticism, which overshadowed any awareness of the victory where they had attempted its assault in vain… ”

Finally, a report was sent to Rome documenting all the supposed theological, moral and methodological errors of the Cursillo. After some weeks, the Holy See called Doctor Hervás, who energetically defended the Cursillo Movement before the high tribunal. In his own words he said: “Yes, they denounced me to the Holy See, because they charged that in Cursillo heresies were spoken, such as “de colores”, meaning to live in grace. In Cursillo Jesus was called “The Boss”, when he has a name so significant as Jesus, but also, because in Cursillo they emitted doubtful moral judgements. And mainly, because in the Method, things were done that were contradictory, swearwords were used, they told rude jokes, they used a very vile language…

“Well, they called me to the Holy See, which was something like saying: ‘They will suspend you’. AND I was. They read me the accusations and I responded. I believed that the answers had satisfied the interrogators and I returned to my diocese (Mallorca) thinking that the case was finished.”

This was not to be. A few days later, bishop Hervás was told officially by the Nuncio that he was transferred to Ciudad Real in mainland Spain. Out of obedience he accepted and prepared to leave the diocese of Mallorca. He took Cursillo with him.

The movement began in Ciudad Real with much tighter controls than those in place at the beginning in Mallorca. They began to accept only mature men and those from a certain social level and the focus on reaching out to those who were far away from God and the Church became the exception rather than the rule. It took on an official clerical focus, moving away from the lay orientation of its origins. “The postcursillo stressed formation and had little to do with personal experience, it orchestrated the movement as the servant for other organizations and the various works and activities of the diocese. The Cursillo movement, an instrument of Christian renewal, was to become the Cursillo Movement, instrument of the pastoral needs of the diocese”.

 

CURSILLO COMES TO NORTH AMERICA

Meanwhile, in Mallorca, the new bishop was not in favour of the Cursillo, and life for the Mallorcan Cursillistas became very difficult, culminating eventually in a directive to cease all Cursillo activities, weekends, ultreyas, schools, etc.

Before this happened, a young flight lieutenant in the Spanish air force participated in what was to be the last Cursillo for some time and he gave himself entirely to the whole process. Shortly afterwards, he found that, in accordance with the Spanish-USA mutual military agreement, he would be sent for a training program to a military base near Laredo, Texas. This was near Waco, in the diocese of Austin. It happened that a Franciscan from Mallorca was also working there. He had made a Cursillo in his home country years before and was looking for ways to establish the movement in his new home.

Using this situation as an opportunity, the Mallorcan leaders put the young airman through a crash course in the Cursillo method in the short time he had before leaving for the United States. When he left, his bags carried more Cursillo material than personal belongings. When he arrived he found another Spanish officer who was also a Cursillista.

Eventually, through the work of these three, Father Gabriel Fernandez and two airmen, Bernardo Vadell and Agustin Palomino, the first Cursillo in the United States was held in Waco, Texas, in May 1957. Father Gabriel had arrived in Waco in 1955 from Spain where he had made his three-days under Fr. Juan Capo and Eduardo Bonnin. The priest and the airmen were responsible for putting on the first two weekends in Waco.

CANADIAN CONFERENCE OF CATHOLIC CURSILLOS ESTABLISHED

Eventually the Cursillo Movement moved into Canada in 1963, crossing the border to Vancouver, Toronto and Montreal. It also came in the French language to Sherbrooke, Quebec. In the intervening years, the Movement spread across the country until by 1990 it was established and active in eight of the ten provinces in Canada. The Cursillo in Canada is not limited only to the Catholic Church but is lived in many other denominations.

The first Ottawa Cursillo was held in February 1966, the same year Pope Paul VI designated Cursillo a renewal movement of the Church and named St. Paul as patron. The Ottawa English Cursillo community helped start Cursillo in the Ottawa French (1975) and Ottawa Anglican (1981) communities as well as in Cornwall (1974), Nova Scotia (1975) and Labrador (2003).

(A detailed history of Cursillo in Ottawa over the past 50 years (1966-2016) can be obtained from the Ottawa Cursillo Archivist in four souvenir booklets prepared for the 20^th, 25^th, 40^th and 50^th anniversaries.)

In 1984, the Canadian Conference of Catholic Cursillos (CCCC) was established, becoming the National Secretariat for the English-speaking movement in Canada. A similar organization, the Mouvement Cursillos de Francophones, (MCF), was already established for Francophones and operates mainly in Quebec, with some French-speaking movements in New Brunswick and Ontario. The Cursillo Movement is also established in the Korean, Spanish, Vietnamese, Chinese, Hungarian, and Croatian communities. There is also an active Native Cursillo Movement for our First Nations brothers and sisters.

In 1980, the Cursillo Movement had established an international office, the OMCC (Organismo Mundial de Cursillos de Cristiandad), in Santo Domingo to coordinate the three existing international working groups of Latin America, Europe and the International English Language Group. These later evolved into four geographic groups APG (Asia-Pacific), GECC (Europe), GLCC (Latin America) and NACG (North America and Caribbean). Canadian leaders began to attend international meetings of the world body and in 1990, Canada was asked to assume the responsibility of being the host country of the OMCC. It was through this undertaking that Canada forged its links with the founder of the Movement, Eduardo Bonnin, and the Mallorcan School of Leaders. In 1992, Eduardo came to a meeting in Toronto and Canadian leaders, the members of the OMCC, heard from him his original vision for the Movement. They had invited him for the sole purpose of trying to determine what they were called to be and to do at the world level. That vision was somewhat different from what they had understood and what was practised.

Eduardo Bonnin returned to Canada and spoke to more than two hundred leaders at the First National Encounter, in Kitchener. At the time, most of our Movements felt that they had a good understanding of Cursillo, its mentality and method. There was great shock when Eduardo said the words, “Cursillo has yet to be tried, anywhere in the world.” From his answers to the many questions asked of him, Canadian leaders everywhere began to ponder if they, indeed, understood this Movement in which they worked so hard.

CONVERSATIONS BEGIN

Since that time, every one of the annual conferences in Canada has attempted to bring to the participants the ideas and thinking of the Founder and the Cursillo Movement as it was intended to be lived. In between conferences, CCCC has done all that it can to translate and make available the writings of Eduardo Bonnin and other important documents that provide resource material for the Schools of Leaders across the country. Although it may appear that this information is published very slowly, it must be understood that it is a long and laborious process. The texts are refined and reviewed and edited until they are ready for a final edit in Mallorca. The process for the more complex documents is for CCCC to go to Mallorca and go over every paragraph, sometimes every word with one or other of the Mallorca leaders who is fluent in English. Since beginning the ongoing study of the texts from Mallorca, CCCC has come to realize that much of the misunderstanding of the purpose and strategy of the Movement has come about because of the poor translations of existing documents. What is vital is to translate not just words but ideas and that is what takes place during the long hours of work in Mallorca.

Canadian leaders, on several occasions, spent time with Eduardo Bonnin, asking him questions and seeking the answers to some of the questions that Canadian Cursillistas raised. These trips to Mallorca provided an additional element to our understanding and our leaders have seen what it is to live the Cursillo as the Mallorcan Cursillistas live it, attending their ultreyas, participating in their clausuras, being a part of their School of Leaders, and spending hours in dialogue with many of their leaders.

The 60th anniversary of the Movement in 2004 saw a great celebration in Mallorca . On the actual date in August, Cursillistas travelled to Cala Figuera. A commemorative plaque had been attached to a wall outside the chalet ‘Mar y Pins’ which Eduardo unveiled, after which the Cursillistas attended a thanksgiving celebration of the Eucharist where Eduardo addressed the Cursillistas. The mayor of Cala Figuera promised that one of the plazas in a new development in the town would be called the Plaza Eduardo Bonnin, an acknowledgement of the humble man who received the Charism which has resulted in a worldwide movement and which, incidentally, brings many tourists to Cala Figuera to see where Cursillo began.

The official celebration of the 60th anniversary took place in Palma in November of 2004. Seven hundred people attended, Cursillistas from years gone by, one a candidate from that first Cursillo in Cala Figuera. The bishop of Mallorca, Jesus Murgui Soriano, attended and in his remarks praised the Cursillistas for the great work that they had accomplished but cautioned them not to rest on their laurels, to look around and see a world that still needed to hear the same Good News, “God Loves You”.

Eventually, some of the Cursillistas encouraged Eduardo to allow them to begin to archive his letters, notes, and papers, all meticulously kept for more than sixty years. The Eduardo Bonnin Aguiló Foundation, known as FEBA, has been established and gradually the history of Cursillo, from the very beginning, is being compiled. The purpose of the Foundation is to gather, protect and spread the thoughts and work of Eduardo Bonnin Aguiló, or the Cursillo in Christianity Movement.