PIUSVEREIN. - Association founded in Mainz in 1848 by A. F. Lenning, canon of the Cathedral, and by G. Riffel in order to organize the Catholics of Germany in defense of their religious freedom and their civil rights. It took its name from the then reigning pope Pius IX.
The Association, according to the first article of its statute, set out "to prevent, holding fast to the foundations of freedom and of absolute parity in religious questions, that this freedom and parity should be diminished in any way and anywhere to the detriment of the Catholic religion." Furthermore it was approved that an analogous association should be established in every German city and village where Catholics resided, and that the P. of Mainz, in view of the particular importance of the city and of the number of Catholics residing there, should become the national center of all the various local associations. The P. of Mainz served as a model for the formation of the other associations scattered throughout Germany. From Hesse to Silesia, from Württemberg to Baden, from the Tyrol to the Baltic and from the Rhine to Poland, Catholic Germany drew together into many associations, whose representatives in Oct. 1848 gathered in a general congress at Mainz and constituted the Catholic Association of Germany (Katholischer Verein Deutschlands). This was the first national organization of Catholics, who from that time onward gathered periodically in congress at the Katholikentage. In Switzerland too the P. arose at Beckenried in 1857, with the same aims as the German one; it spread through all the cantons and in 1904 at Lucerne, together with other organizations, constituted the Schweizerische Katholisches Volksverein. In Austria the name of P. zur Förderung der katholischen Presse was taken by the Association established in 1905 by Fr. Kolb, which in 1920 merged into the Volksbund der Katholiken Österreichs.
Bibliography4 works
Silvio Furlani