ACTION POPULAIRE. - Publishing enterprise founded in Reims (1903) by the Jesuit Henri Leroy for the purpose of publishing and distributing short, inexpensive pamphlets intended to make known, with the collaboration of experts, the thought and activity of Catholics, especially in the social sphere.
The initiative developed rapidly; and the series of the Opuscoli gialli, at first monthly, then quarterly, numbered thousands of issues after ten years (Studi generali, Opere sociali, Famiglia, Professione, Opere straniere). To these were added the Guides sociaux (1904), with bibliographic repertories, followed in 1911 by a yearbook that rose to international importance: Année sociale internationale (published for only 4 years), then the pamphlets of religious action. The demands of the religious struggle, ever more violent, facilitated a large publishing output: popular leaflets, printed in millions of copies, the Revue de l'A. P., the Almanach, and the journal Le Mouvement social (1909), a transformation of the Association catholique (v.).
So much activity, reinforced by intense propaganda on the part of the clergy and professionals, provoked the reaction of the Masonic government (Caillaux-Malvy ministry), which carried out searches (1912) on the pretext that the A. P. was directed by the Jesuits. Bitter clashes followed on the part of Catholics who called themselves "integralists." The war of 1914 destroyed the Reims headquarters and interrupted the activity of the A. P. Resumed in 1919, it found expression in the Institute of Social Studies and Action and in the journal Dossiers de l'A. P., followed in 1929 by the Cahiers d'Action populaire et religieuse. After the Second World War, which had necessarily restricted, but not suppressed, the activity of the A. P., the Dossiers were replaced by the Travaux de l'A. P., and the Cahiers resumed, along with the broader dissemination of current-affairs pamphlets.
Bibliography2 works
Egilberto Martire