Asociación Nacional de Estudiantes Católicos
The Asociación Nacional de Estudiantes Católicos , ANEC, was a Catholic youth and student organization founded in Chile in 1915 by the priest Julio Prestat. It became the cadre forge the politicians who later founded the Christian Democratic Party of Chile .
history
The ANEC was founded with the aim of counteracting the increasing secularism in the Universidad de Chile (University of Chile) universities. It was also intended to prepare students to later embark on a political career in the Catholic Conservative Party . In the course of the 1920s, finally from 1928 when the priest Óscar Larson Sudy took over the management, the ANEC began to open to modern ideas and was mainly influenced by the Belgian University of Leuven ( Catholic University of Leuven ), where P . Larson had studied. Above all, a market-critical interpretation of the social cyclicals was carried out there. In 1932 Eduardo Frei Montalva , who later became the Christian Democratic President of Chile , became President of the ANEC.
In the 1930s, the ANEC gained several members who later became important Christian Democrats: Bernardo Leighton, Ignacio Palma, Manuel Ignacio Garretón, etc. The later Bishop of Talca and great promoter of land reform, Manuel Larraín Errázuriz , also became a member. The organization's magazine was called Revista de Estudiantes Católicos (REC) and it spread the new theological approaches that came from Europe in Chile. The magazine was later renamed Revista de Extensión Cultural . Through them, the ideas of Jacques Maritain , Raissa Maritain, Léon Bloy , Charles Péguy , Emmanuel Mounier etc. were published in Chile. ANEC had close ties with Catholic Action . An ANEC delegation, consisting of Eduardo Frei Montalva, Manuel Ignacio Garretón and P. Óscar Larson, took part in the Iberoamerican Congress for Catholic Students (Congreso Iberoamericano de Universitarios Católicos) in Rome in 1934. During this trip Eduardo Frei Montalva got to know the most important figures of the then (partly still developing) left political Catholicism in Europe. With the establishment of the Falange Nacional , first as a movement within the Conservative Party and later as a party, as well as the publications belonging to them, the ANEC began to lose importance. Later the Jesuit magazine Mensaje became the publication of left Catholicism in Chile.
literature
- Cristián Gazmuri: Eduardo Frei Montalva y su época. Santiago de Chile 2000 (Aguilar)