The Hogar de Cristo

Just a month previous to his resignation, on a particularly cold rainy night he had an experience which he himself relates: “A poor man, in shirt sleeves, suffering from acute tonsillitis and shivering with the cold, approached me saying he had nowhere to find shelter.” The man’s misery left Fr. Hurtado shaken. A few days later, October 16, while giving a retreat to a group of women in the Casa del Apostolado Popular, he began to speak, on the spur of the moment, about the misery that existed in Santiago and the need to respond to it. “Christ roams through our streets in the person of so many suffering poor, sick, dispossessed and people thrown out of their miserable slums; Christ huddled under bridges, in the person of so many children who lack someone to call father, who have been deprived for many a year of a mother’s kiss upon their foreheads… Christ is without a home! Shouldn’t we want to give him one, those of us who have the joy of a comfortable home, plenty of good food, the means to educate and assure the future of our children? ‘What you do to the least of my brothers, you do to me’, Jesus has said.” And in this simple way the idea of the Hogar de Cristo was born. Upon leaving the retreat he received the first donations from these women: a piece of land, various checks and personal jewels.

In May of 1945, the Archbishop of Santiago, the Most Rev. José María Caro blessed the first headquarters of the Hogar de Cristo. The following year saw the inauguration of the Hospice on Chorillos street. Little by little the Hogar de Cristo showed an admirable growth and gave invaluable service to the poorest, creating a wave of solidarity that, to date, has gone beyond Chilean frontiers. Its goal was “to take the children salvaged from beneath the bridges of the river Mapocho and return them to society, transformed into specialized workers.”

Meanwhile, Alberto Hurtado continued his ministry of formation among youth. In 1945 he published the text: Adolescent affective life, the crisis of puberty and education for chastity while continuing the preaching of retreats. In June of that year, in a talk in preparation for the feast of the Sacred Heart, he reminded students of their social responsibilities, responsibilities consequent on the words of Christ: “The social obligation of university students is nothing more than the concrete application of the teachings of Christ to their lives as students today and to their future as professionals”, and he invited each one to “study their career plans in light of the social problems proper to their professional contexts.” He ventured to require a great generosity from youth with the certainty that “the foundation of all education is to infuse the hearts of the young with love for Jesus Christ. One who has even once looked deeply into the eyes of Jesus, can never forget it.”

In September of 1945, Fr. Hurtado traveled to the United States and to countries of Central America. He arrived in Dallas, Texas in October and began a series of interviews and visits to charitable institutions. In Kansas he met with Bishop O’Hara, visited the Redemptorists, the Chancery and the office of Catholic Action and, later, Fr. Flanagan’s Boys’ Town. He traveled to Canada early in January and soon after returned to Washington. On January 29th he began his retreat in Baltimore and, once over, he set sail from New York for Valparaiso in the Illapel of the South American Steamship Line. He took advantage of the month long voyage for reflection and writing about the many interesting works visited and the contacts made. He likewise did some meditating on the direction of his own life: “Each time I went up to the command bridge and saw the helmsman at work I could not help reflecting on what was most fundamental in determining the direction of my life.”

The Social Apostolate

Having returned to his usual full work schedule, he preached a well-remembered retreat during Holy Week of 1946 (later published in the book, Un disparo a la eternidad, (An arrow shot toward eternity) pp.33-73), and began to give classes in the Hogar Catequístico (Catechetical Institute) and the Grange School. In 1947 he preached a retreat at the Major Seminary in Santiago and to various other groups. On the feast of the Sacred Heart, June 13, together with a group of university students who wished to help the workers, he founded the Acción Sindical y Económica Chilena (ASICH) (Chilean Sindicate and Economic Action) as a means of searching for “a way to make the Church present in the area of organized labor.”

Between July 1947 and January 1948 Fr. Hurtado traveled to France to participate in a series of important congresses and study weeks. On requesting permission to make the trip from his superior, Fr. Alvaro Lavín, he wrote the following: “Would it be too bold to request that you consider the possibility of my attending the Paris Congress? I admit that it would be of great benefit to be able to see the new social orientations, those of Catholic Action and the Marian Congregations… If it is presumptuous destroy these lines without further consideration.”

Armed with the consent of superiors, he left for France on July 24, 1947. During his participation in the 34th Social Week in Paris he spoke at length with Cardinal E. Suhard, the Archbishop of Paris. He spent a week at L’Acción Populaire (social action center organized by French Jesuits, at present CERAS), and then took part in the Semana Internacional (International Week) of the Jesuits of Versailles. On two occasions he spoke to the assembly of the situation in Chile in what has been described as “a cry of anguish but at the same time an irresistible lesson in pure, ardently supernatural apostolic zeal”, leading many to consider him one of the most remarkable personalities at the meeting. On August 24th he passed through Lourdes on his way to Spain, spending a few days, on his return trip with the priest workers in Marseilles and in September, participated in the Pastoral Liturgical Congress in Lyon and the Week for Moderators of Young Catholic Workers in Versailles. In October he traveled to Rome and had three audiences with the General of the Society of Jesus, a meeting with Bishop Montini (the future Pope Paul VI) and on October 18 was received in special audience with His Holiness Pius XII who promised him great support. Finally, together with Manuel Larraín, he visited the philosopher Jacques Maritain. Fr. Hurtado himself wrote: “The month in Rome was a grace from heaven because I saw and heard things of great interest that have encouraged me mightily to continue wholeheartedly in what has been initiated. In this sense the words of the Holy Father and our own Father General have been a great stimulus for me.”

In his return trip to France at the end of October he stopped in Turin to visit the Piccola Casa of Providence and from the end of October until November 16 he stayed at Économie et Humanisme (Economy and Humanism), another Catholic institution dedicated to the study of social and economic problems, with its founder Fr. J. Lebret. During these days he made a quick trip to Belgium in order to study the League of Catholic Rural Workers, Christian Syndicates and the Young Catholic Workers. Finally on November 17 he arrived in Paris and, rightly, he was able to write: “I have accumulated tons of very interesting experiences.”

After this busy itinerary crammed with congresses and interviews, he arrived in Paris with the intention of “shutting myself in my room for a time to digest, hone and write down the enormous accumulation of experiences.” In December he wrote: “Here I am in Paris, living as though I were in a retreat house, shut up in a room full of books… there is so much to do, so much to read and meditate on because God has given me this trip to renew me and prepare me for the enormous problems we have at home.” He remained in Paris for more than two months leaving for only a few days to go to Lyon for a congress of moral theologians; his exposition regarding the relation between Church and State was entitled: “With or without power?”

Though in many ways his trip was fruitful and his opinion of the Catholic social movement was in general positive, he also saw the possibility of the risks involved. For example, with regard to the congress of moral theologians, he perceived “an excessive eagerness for renewal” and a “tendency to forget the true values of the Church, its traditional vision”, a tendency that would, as a result, leave the Church “without authentic Christian leaders, leaving these with only a social mystique but not a socially Christian conscience.” At the same time he notes that “there is above all a great deal of spirit, a great desire to serve the Church and a very real self denial shown in the works they undertake.” There was a strengthening of his great admiration for the social commitment of the French Church.

On his return to Chile, these experiences allowed him to push forward his ASICH project, making its very starting point a solid foundation in Christ and his Church. The task was difficult and not without misunderstandings. The chief problem lay in the law of the single syndicate, which obliged all to participate in the same union with the obvious danger of politicization. As he himself wrote in 1951 on recalling the situation that prevailed at the founding of ASICH, “The workers, despite being Catholics in their great majority, were unable to exercise any influence as such and followed marxist slogans.” ASICH then was initiated as an alternative mode of participation for workers, centered in the social teaching of the Church, with the purpose of defending the dignity of human work above any and all ideological slogans. Although criticism continued, it was unable to discourage Fr. Hurtado who felt heartened by the social encyclicals: “to prepare workers and employees to be able to take into their own hands the movement for the ‘redemption of the proletariat’, an essential element of the new order.”

In a letter responding to criticisms, Fr. Hurtado reveals his own personality: “Of course there are many dangers and the terrain is difficult… Who is blind to this? But is this a good enough reason to abandon and postpone it yet again?… I may blunder and go too far, for sure! But wouldn’t it be a greater blunder to do nothing out of cowardice, in a mistaken desire for perfection?”