POTTIER, ANTOINE. - Sociologist, b. at Spa (Belgium) on 22 Feb. 1849, d. at Rome on 24 Nov. 1923. A boarder at the Collegio Capranica in Rome (1868-1875), he earned his degree in philosophy and theology at the Gregorian University.
A priest in 1874, he was professor of moral theology at the Grand Séminaire of Liège from 1879 to 1902, when owing to illness he had to give up teaching. Having settled in Rome, he displayed there a rich social activity as a lecturer, newspaper contributor, ecclesiastical assistant of the Catholic Labor Union (1910), founder or promoter of mutual aid societies, cooperatives and professional organizations for tram workers, nurses, street sweepers, shop clerks, etc., and of more than ten professional women's unions. He also held, as successor to Msgr. Radini-Tedeschi, the chair of sociology at the Collegio Leoniano (1905-15). In 1900, at Liège, he published a treatise De iure et iustitia, an excellent commentary on the encyclical Rerum novarum (1891). Head of the so-called school of Liège, the antithesis of the school of Angers, he founded the Christian Democratic Union of Liège (1892), giving it a program of social and political demands (1893), already largely implemented by Belgian legislation. P. upheld the family wage in 1890 and, later, employee shareholding. Around 1920 he set a precedent in Spain with the Grupo de la democracia cristiana. Among P.'s other publications are remembered: La coopération et les sociétés ouvrières (Liège 1889); L'Eglise et la démocratie chrétienne, in Les directions pontificales et la démocratie chrétienne, by G. Goyau, G. Toniolo, A. P. (ibid. 1901); La Questione operaia, I (Rome 1903); La morale catholique et les questions sociales d'aujourd'hui, I (Charleroi 1920, Italian ed. Milan 1921), II (Brussels 1921).
Bibliography8 works
Augusto Pelzer