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Conference on “A politics rooted in the people”

Community Organising, The Centre for Theology & Community l

Pope Francis’s new book Let Us Dream will be the basis for an international conference on April 15th 2021. Grassroots leaders, community organisers and academics will gather to take forward the Pope’s remarkable call for the Church to embrace “a politics rooted in the people,” with a focus on broad-based organising and “popular movements”.

The conference will be convened by CTC in partnership with Catholic institutions in the United States, European Union and United Kingdom. It will form part of the 50th anniversary celebrations of the Catholic Campaign for Human Development (CCHD), the domestic anti-poverty program of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, which empowers low-income people to participate in decisions that affect their lives, families and communities and nurtures solidarity between people living in poverty and their neighbours.

Austen Ivereigh, who helped Francis compile the book, has said that Let Us Dream contains the clearest endorsement ever by a Pope of broad-based community organising, and the “inclusive populism” it embodies. Dr Ivereigh will give a keynote address at the conference, after which there will be presentations involving grassroots leaders, community organisers and Catholic academics.  

The aim of the conference is to help the Church respond at all levels to Pope Francis’ call for engagement with popular movements, and to ensure that such engagement flows from the heart of the Church’s life and prayer.

Alongside CTC and CCHD, conference partners include Caritas Social Action Network (an agency of the Catholic Bishops Conference for England and Wales), Boston College Law School, the Centre for Catholic Social Thought and Practice, the Institute of Pastoral Studies at Loyola University in Chicago, the Katholische Hochschule für Sozialwesen in Berlin and the Oblates of Mary Immaculate (Anglo-Irish Province).

The conference will run from 1600 to 2000 UK time (0800 to 1200 Pacific Time, 1700 to 2100 Central European Time) on 15th April 2021. It will be possible to watch and to participate via webchat without any need to register. The conference programme will be available from 26th March on a dedicated conference website – www.letusdreamconference.org

 

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