Catholic Action

[2] The Catholic Action movement has its beginnings in the latter part of the 19th century as efforts to counteract a rise in anti-clerical sentiment, especially in Europe.

[3] Around 1912, as a curate in a parish in Laeken, on the outskirts of Brussels, Joseph Cardijn, who dedicated his ministry to aid the working class, founded for the young seamstresses a branch of the Needleworkers' Trade Union.

[5] In 1934, Adolf Hitler ordered the murder of Erich Klausener, head of a Catholic Action group in Nazi Germany, during the Night of the Long Knives.

[citation needed] Pope Paul VI commended those who are "fighting for Christ in the ranks of Catholic Action and in the other associations and activities of the apostolate" in his first encyclical letter, Ecclesiam suam, linking their actions with the dialogue inside and outside the church which he saw as the work of the Second Vatican Council.

A year later, the Organization Catholique Internationale du Cinéma (OCIC) was founded in The Netherlands, and the Bureau Catholic International de Radiodiffusion (BCIR), in Germany.

They answered a call from God through the church to evangelize the secular mass media, or at least endow them with Gospel values.

As a result of the merger of the Catholic media organizations OCIC and Unda, a new organisation was founded in 2001 in Rome called SIGNIS.

The emblems of Acción Católica Mexicana displayed on altar walls in the temple of Fábrica-María village, Otzolotepec , Mexico. In the 20th century, the movement was enthusiastically supported by the workers of the local textile industry.