MUN, ALBERT de. - Social organizer and politician, b. at Lumigny on 23 Feb. 1841, d. at Bordeaux on 6 Oct. 1914. Taken prisoner in the Franco-Prussian War and interned at Aachen, he was shaken by reading E. Keller's L'encyclique du 8 déc. et les principes du 1789; the advice of Fr. Eck and his meeting with the deputy Lingen of the German "Centre" opened his soul to the great social problems, whose solution he immediately glimpsed as attainable only in a Catholicism that re-educates peoples.
A first lecture given at the workers' circle on rue Montparnasse revealed his vocation to him: at Christmas 1871, with his brother Robert, La Tour, Meignen, Keller and other people, he founded the Oeuvre des cercles ouvriers, which brought hundreds of circles into being throughout France with surprising rapidity. Conservative circles reacted to the clear intention of economic reform proclaimed by de M., and so did liberal Catholics, who misinterpreted the movement as an attempt to restore the ancien régime. In 1875 he resigned his commission as captain, in order to devote himself more easily to propaganda. In 1876 he entered political life with his candidacy at Pontivy, opposed by strong adversaries. The stages of his political journey are: from a passionate defense of the monarchist cause he passed to the exaltation of the republican regime; in 1885 he attempted the formation of a great Catholic party, an attempt that failed because of the opposition of Rome, to which M. humbly submitted; in 1888-89 he favored, not successfully, the candidacy of Boulanger; he took part in the Dreyfus affair with three famous speeches and upheld in the Chamber, with incomparable eloquence, the rights of morality and of the Church against the progressive laicization that culminated in the rupture of diplomatic relations between the Holy See and France. In 1907 he was received among the members of the Académie. He closed his life with a noble testament of fidelity to the Pope.
His thought is collected in: Discours et écrits divers, distributed as follows: Questions sociales (Paris 1871-87); Discours politiques (2 vols., ibid. 1876-87); Discours et écrits divers (2 vols., ibid. 1888-94); Discours et écrits divers (2 vols., ibid. 1894-1902); La vocation sociale (ibid. 1908); Combats d'hier et d'aujourd'hui 1902-10 (ibid. 1910); and other minor works.
Bibliography4 works
Cosimo Petino