ACTION POPULAIRE. — Publishing enterprise founded in Reims (1903) by the Jesuit Enrico Leroy with the aim of publishing and disseminating short, inexpensive pamphlets intended, with the collaboration of experts, to make known the thought and activity of Catholics, especially in the social sphere.
The initiative developed rapidly; and the series of Opuscoli gialli, at first monthly and later quarterly, comprised thousands of numbers after ten years (Studi generali, Opere sociali, Famiglia, Professione, Opere straniere). The Guides sociaux (1904), containing bibliographical repertories, were added, followed in 1911 by a yearbook that acquired international importance: Année sociale internationale (published for only four years), and then by pamphlets on religious action. The demands of the increasingly violent religious struggle facilitated extensive publishing activity: 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.).
Such activity, reinforced by intense propaganda among the clergy and professionals, provoked a reaction from the Masonic government (the Caillaux-Malvy ministry), which conducted searches (1912) on the pretext that the A. P. was directed by the Jesuits. Bitter disputes ensued on the part of the Catholics who called themselves « integrists ». 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 Studies and Social 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 curtailed but not suppressed the activity of the A. P., the Dossiers were replaced by the Travaux de l'A. P.; the Cahiers resumed publication, as did the broader dissemination of pamphlets on current affairs.