Pax Romana

PAX ROMANA. - It is a work of apostolate conceived on the international plane; it seeks to bring about, amid a bewildered world, the union of Catholic students and intellectuals, in order to proclaim the Christian message. Its program is summed up in the motto: Pax Christi in regno Christi.

After numerous attempts to organize Catholic student youth internationally — attempts that can be traced back to the first contacts between Swiss and French students in 1887, under the sponsorship of Baron George de Montenach and Count Albert de Mun, and that followed one another in an alternation of hopes and failures — P. r. was finally established at Fribourg (where a first constitutive meeting had already been held on 23 Aug. 1889, which remained without effect) on 20 July 1921 as the "International Secretariat of the National Associations of Catholic University Students." Twenty countries affiliated at once with the new Secretariat. The program included exchange of students, financial support for works of spiritual assistance in the universities, assistance to needy students, international meetings, etc. The Secretariat developed rapidly, and the successive annual congresses (1922 Fribourg, 1923 Salzburg, 1924 Budapest) demonstrated its growing vitality, until at the Bologna Congress (1925) it was transformed into an international confederation, "Confederatio studentium universi terrarum orbis catholica."

P. r. continued its activity at an increasing pace until the outbreak of the Second World War. In the meantime a group of graduates and professionals had taken shape within it who, educated in its spirit and its ideals, were unwilling to leave it and disperse. Thus it was that at the end of the war, the Congress assembled at Fribourg in 1946 for the 25th anniversary of the founding of P. r. took up the idea of establishing an autonomous section for intellectuals and professionals. The project was by then ripe, and during the octave of Easter 1947, two assemblies meeting simultaneously in Rome and at Anzio consecrated the reorganization of P. r. into two international movements, of intellectuals and professionals (Mouvement international des intellectuels catholiques [M. I. I. C.]) and of university students (Mouvement international des étudiants catholiques [M. I. E. C.]).

According to the new statutes, the two sections of the single P. r. are autonomous and have their own organs; nevertheless they collaborate with one another closely and intimately, especially through the "Comitato di P. r.," made up of the president, a vice-president, and the secretary general of each of the two branches. Msgr. Charrière, bishop of Lausanne, Geneva and Fribourg, in whose diocese P. r. has its seat, holds the office of general ecclesiastical assistant and appoints an ecclesiastical assistant for each of the two movements. Common to the two movements is also the "Bureau de secours," which gathers information on the needs of students and intellectuals in countries devastated by the war, coordinates efforts, and distributes funds.

Members of the MIEC are the national federations of Catholic university students (74 national federations in 46 countries, at the beginning of 1950); members of the MIIC are the Catholic associations of intellectuals and members of the liberal professions, whether they have a national character or pursue particular aims (38 organizations, representing 31 countries at the beginning of 1950). The general Secretariat of both branches has its seat at Fribourg (Switzerland); the various international secretariats have their seats in different countries.

Every three years a world congress common to the two movements is held. P. r. publishes its own monthly organ, common to the two movements, drawn up in French, German, English and Spanish, and Scrinum (elenchus bibliographicus universalis), a universal bulletin of bibliography.

Marisetta Paronetto Valier