Joseph Wresinski

The Father Joseph Wresinski [[Polish] Józef Wrzesiński ] (Angers February 12th 1917 - Paris February 14th 1988) was a priest French diocesan, founder of the Movement of the Human rights DTA Fourth World.

Biography

Born from a father Polish and a mother Spanish E, Joseph Wresinski is born in a very poor hearth with Angers, France. His/her father, carrying a German passport, is interned with his wife and their first child, Louis, initially at the height of Saumur, then in the buildings of the old Great Seminar of Angers, the Saint-Serge Abbey, transformed into camp of internment for the suspect foreigners of collaboration with the enemy. The second child of the couple Wresinski, Sophie, dies there in low age. Joseph is born to with it in 1917. At the conclusion of the war, they find refuge in an old closed down forging mill, street Saint-Jacob in Angers. As of his young age, Joseph is brought to provide for the needs for the family by keeping a goat then by serving the mass in the nuns of Good Pasteur, in exchange of a bowl of milk and two pennies. " In fact the two pennies decided " to me; , he will say later. At the 13 years age, he is engaged like apprentice baker.

Its formation brings it to Nantes where, after having attended for 6 months Communist youths, it makes, via a comrade of work, the knowledge of the JOC, the Christian working Jeunesse, founded in Belgium by the Abbot Joseph Cardijn. As member of the J.O.C., it takes part in investigations into the conditions of existence, often terrible, of the young workers. Little time afterwards, it decides to become priest and at 17 years, it resumes studies on the benches of the Small Seminar of Beaupréau (Maine-et-Loire), with pupils who are 5 years old less than him. The general mobilization then the war stop its course towards the priesthood, and it is only in October 1940 that it joined the Great Seminar of Soissons, taken refuge with Entrammes. The choice of the diocese of Soissons, rather than that of Angers, its birthplace, finds its origin in the fact that its studies are dealt with financially by family of farmers of Soissonnais whose relationship was nun in Good Pasteur in Angers and knew the Wresinski family for a very long time. It is ordered priest the June 29th 1946, with Soissons.

Vicar then Cleaned in Parish S workers (Tergnier) and rural (Dhuizel), during ten years, in the department of Aisne, it does not cease going to the research of poorest, the most humiliated of. He spends a few months to the Mission of France, works in the mines, contracts tuberculosis. In pilgrimage with Rome in 1950, it continues its voyage as far as Sicily to discover " in particular there; the hell blanc" , sicilian salt mines. Knowing its research, its bishop (Mgr Pierre Douillard), which had been cleaned in Angers, in the parish of the Wresinski family, then proposes to him in 1956 to join a camp of homeless person, with Noisy-the-Large (Paris region), where it will found the movement DTA Fourth World. It also created the term of " Fourth World " . The camp of Noisy-the-Large had been created two years earlier, on the initiative of the Abbé Pierre, to rehouse families lodged initially Porte of Charenton to Paris, after the call launched by the founder of Emmaüs in February 1954.

The July 14th 1956, Joseph Wresinski joined the 252 families gathered in the camp of the homeless person. It tests a true shock there. “ This day, I entered misfortune ”, will write it later. “I was haunted by the idea that never these families would not leave as a long time misery as they would not be accommodated as a whole, as people, where the other men discussed. I promised myself that if I remained, I would make so that these families can climb the steps of the Vatican, of the Elysium, UNO…”

From now on, it will devote all its energy to be made recognize these people in search of dignity, people with a single thought and an experiment, essential to the company. He is opposed to the soup kitchen and proposes to the families a kindergarten and a library. “It is not so much of food, of clothing which need all these people had, but of dignity, not to more depend on goodwill others” . A vault, workshops for the young people and the adults, a laundry, a living room of esthetics for the women will be realized little by little. With the families of the camp and some friends, an association is created which takes the name of “Assistance to any distress” (DTA Fourth World). Camp of Noisy-the-Large, the Movement DTA Fourth World will extend gradually, of the volunteers going to initially join other places of abandonment of the Paris region (Camped It, with Courneuve; Francs-Moisins, in Saint-Denis); then in other towns of France, Europe like in the United States of America (New York, in 1964). Through voyages and the maintenance of long and faithful correspondence, the father Joseph Wresinski in parallel develops a network of friends throughout the world, composed people and small organizations engaged near poorest. " That nobody remains alone in his engagement with very the pauvres" was one of its concerns. It is from this point of view that it creates at the end of the years 1970 the " Permanent forum on extreme poverty in the monde". It is at the same time as after more than 20 years of presence and action near poorest of Europe and North America, of the volunteers are sent in South America, Asia and Africa.

Member of the Economic and Social Council of the French Republic starting from 1979, the father Joseph Wresinski will write a report/ratio with the social and political repercussions important through Europe and in the world. This report/ratio entitled “Great poverty and economic and social precariousness” is adopted the February 11th 1987. A few days after, on February 20th, 1987, the father Joseph Wresinski speaks in front of the Commission of the human rights of the United Nations in Geneva to ask for this body UNO of recognize extreme poverty like a violation of the human rights.

October 17th of the same year, by inaugurating in Paris a flagstone commemorative of the victims of the misery, sealed on the Square of Trocadéro, it creates the Day world of the refusal of misery, recognized officially by the United Nations like international Journée for the elimination of poverty in December 1992, and celebrated each year the October 17th. The text engraved on the flagstone of the Parvis of the human rights affirms that: " Where men are condemned to live in misery, the human rights are violated. To link itself to make them respect is a duty sacré" .

A few months after, the father Joseph Wresinski dies of the continuations of an surgical operation. Its funeral is celebrated in the Cathedral of Notre-Dame de Paris under the presidency of the Cardinal Jean-Marie Lustiger, Archevêque of Paris. It is buried with Méry-on-Oise (Val-d'Oise), in the middle of the international center of the Movement DTA Fourth World.

Towards a spirituality

The Father Joseph Wresinski was obviously neither the first nor the only one to listen most unhappy of the world and to let themselves transform by them. But what was specific in its step, it is that it resulted bottom , and that today still it can give to understand, interior, how much, to change the things and the world, it is not only possible but essential to be based on the forces, the thought and the will to leave itself poorest themselves there. To regard them indeed intellectual guides differently the company , and thus as levers for the peace of all, without exclusive.

If this step were possible, it is that Wresinski knew, it having lived, which a humiliated man carries at the bottom of the heart, which a desperate woman still hopes for, why certain children have nothing any more but their tears to give to the world. And to have lived itself largest poverty had taught him what no university teaches: that more poor of world wait not charity public, but until they wait that they finally are listened to, equality of humanity. I am not an human being, only one treats me like that!

To start to lead the people of misery to this release, the road will be long for the Father Joseph Wresinski. And difficult. It should not be believed that it was enough for him to open the mouth to be listened… It knew too what there is further than only poverty, and this knowledge is awkward for everyone… It was necessary for him to cross the discouragement and lassitude, the insecurity and loneliness, to exceed the interior wound which what is called darkened in him the self-confidence. It was necessary for him to count on the others, with the risk sometimes not to go also far it would have liked, or to let its thought melt itself in the words of the others… At fifty years, at sixty years, sixty even ten years, he, still, was often a humiliated man. Humiliated, because one refused to listen to his people…

But it inlassablement drew the force and the audacity in the contemplation of Jesus, whom it recognized poor among the poor, poor wretch revealing the nature even of the Father. This Christ taking condition of slave (pH. 2,7) was for him well more than a model: the face of poor God, and liberator because same of his weakness. Because irradiated by the faith in resurrection, the crossed nights could be completed only in clearness the one February 14th.

Some quotations

One cannot like, if there are not time to look at, to include/understand, to penetrate the things, to discover them in-depth, to introduce them in oneself. Time to change oneself, to become a new being, since one knew something again. ( Written and words , p. 177)

All was born from a shared life, never of a theory. The communion is the shared life. ( the poor are the Church , 152 and Écrits and words , I, 473)

The misunderstandings emerge and the good wills wear quickly, when it is a question of making common cause with a very poor population of which we are unaware of the experiment of life. Educated let themselves carry by their own ideas, they always end up thinking of the place of the others. ( the poor are the Church , p. 103-104)

The true great ideas are not in the head but in the heart. They are in the daily life, in the contemplation of each day, the daily patient deprivation which one asserts oneself to build them. They are in the work and the sorrow of the poor, of those which made, of these ideas, of the truths lived and not only of the proclaimed truths, granted, of the privileges of school or group. ( Written and words , I, 406)

To build the company of tomorrow starting from a truth discovered and not of a learned lesson. ( Written and words , I, 531)

It is necessary to know to draw our reflection, as well as our practice, of the experiment of the poorest population. Not of an idea that we are done of his existence but of sound lived daily reality. (…) Our thought and our practice must be those where God finds himself, that It cannot disavow. That obliges us to draw our knowledge from the most rejected populations and that is very difficult for us. ( the poor are the Church , p. 218)

From the start it is necessary to make the daring junction between poorest and Jesus Christ: they do only one. ( the poor are the Church , p. 19)

Jesus-Christ was identified with poorest of her time, it is always identified still and with lowest in touts times. It is thus their life which is also his, which is source of our spirituality. Is it possible for us to work out a theology of the man, without leaving the most worn man by misery? ( the poor are the Church , p. 41-42)

To make of the man more stripped the center, it is to embrace all humanity in only one man, it is not to retain the glance, nor to reduce the vision, it of it is to throw this one at the borders of the love; however the love does not have borders, it is not locked up, it is not controlled, it is always madness. ( the poor are the Church , p. 19)

(It) humiliation of the poor (…) is not only injustice in our eyes; it is negation of the honor of the poor, it is reached fundamental with their dignity. It makes a type of man who has nothing to do with the man such as God and the history of the men created it. (…) Christ could not be a man other than that one, if he wanted to repurchase it, him too. ( Written and words , I, p. 373)

List summary its works

Poland, that become your underprivileged workers? , Pierrelaye 1980
the poor are the Église , discussions with Gilles Anouil, Paris, Centurion, 1983,250 p.
poor Heureux you them , Paris, Cana, 1984,270 p.
the poor, meets true God , Paris, Cerf, 1986, 2nd edition 2005,154 p.
Paroles for tomorrow , Paris, Desclée de Brouwer, 1986,144 p.
Grande poverty and economic and social precariousness , report/ratio presented in the name of the Economic and Social Council by Mr. J. Wresinski, Journal officiel de la R3epublique fran1caise, February 28th 1987
Écrits and words with volunteers. Volume 1,1960-1967 , Luxembourg-Paris, ED. Saint-Paul - Fourth World, 1992,560 p.
Written and words with the volunteers. Divide into volumes March 2nd, th and th - May 1967 , Luxembourg-Paris, ED. Saint-Paul - Fourth World, 1994,148 p.
To live the Gospel in the family, ED. Fourth World, 1993.
Failure with misery , conference made with the Sorbonne on June 1st, 1983, Paris, ED. Fourth World (Books of Baillet), 1996,84 p.
poorest revealing of the indivisibility of the human rights , Paris, Editions Fourth World, 1998 (text published in " 1989, Human rights in question" , report/ratio of the National advisory commission of the human rights, Paris, French Documentation, 1989
Culture and great poverty , Paris, Editions Fourth World (Wresinski Books, in the past Books of Baillet), 2004
Right of God, human rights Paris, Editions Fourth World (Wresinski Books), 2005
Such is the eucharistie , Paris, Éditions the Stag, 2005
Refuser misery. A political thought born from the action , Paris, Editions the Stag, 2007.

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