Christophorus community of Catholic students and academics

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The Christophorus ( proper spelling CHRISTOPHORUS ) is a community of Catholic students and academics.

organization

Christophorus was founded in 1949. The association has around 1000 members nationwide and over twenty local and regional groups.

Its “goal is to serve as a community and through each individual member to deepen and expand the kingdom of God in all areas of life. The name is an expression of this goal. "(Statutes 1956)

The goals of the community include: the personal solidarity of its members with Jesus Christ, the striving for a Christian design of their living space in family, work and society, especially in concern for the rights and needs of their neighbor, their committed church life, as well as solidarity with one another .

Women and men, lay people and priests have been equal members in Christophorus since the community was founded. Christophorus was the first Catholic academic community in Germany to develop and follow this rule.

Community development

When it was founded in 1949, Christophorus consisted predominantly of students, some of whom had already joined together in 1946 in "free" groups with different names but similar objectives. The idea was also - as with the Bund Neudeutschland - to differentiate from the traditional Catholic student associations in order to strive for a contemporary form of academic community life. The then still small number of academics were priests (including some university chaplains), war veterans and academics who had studied during and after the Second World War and worked in Catholic university communities.

In the first decade of its existence, Christophorus spread to many university locations throughout Germany. Now the first local academic bodies emerged, the members of which were predominantly young academics in their professional start-up phase and many of whom were in the process of starting a family.

This growth in the community led to a new statute in 1956 that divided Christophorus into an academic and a student sub-community. Within the community as a whole, academics and students have to perform tasks that are essentially the same and that are graded according to function and order. According to the statutes, the CHRISTOPHORUS unfolds its full effectiveness in the academic body.

Highlights in the history of Christophorus were his anniversary meetings in Würzburg (1959), in Munich (1969 and 1989), in Heusenstamm (1979) and in Erfurt (1999).

activities

Together with other Catholic institutions, Christophorus created a large number of institutions in the church sector. Among other things, he took part in the construction of the “ Willi Graf ” student dormitory in Munich by the Bund Neudeutschland , initiated a working group for managers in business and administration and set up an ecumenical telephone counseling facility in Regensburg .

In the anniversary year 1999, members from different regions of the community founded the "Christophorus-Hilfswerk" initially as a registered association (eV). At the end of 2005, the tasks of this association were transferred to the "Christophorus Aid Organization" that had previously been established. In addition to the diverse individual activities of each individual, this foundation should give the opportunity to work together and on a larger scale on social tasks, especially in the “Third World”.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Reports from partnerships ( Memento from September 27, 2007 in the Internet Archive )