Jocists to Altar

Montreal's baseball stadium last Sunday presented an unusual sight. Before an altar, built between centre field and second base, stood 105 brides in white gowns, white veils, 105 bridegrooms in blue suits. In St. James Basilica that morning they had received Holy Communion. In the Wind sor Hotel they ate breakfast, signed marriage registers. On the baseball field they heard a sermon by Most Rev. George's Gauthier, Archbishop-Coadjutor of Montreal. A dynamic, youngish priest whom they all knew, Father Henri Roy, celebrated a nuptial mass after 105 priests made the couples men and wives. Then, in 105 automobiles lent by General Motors of Canada, Ltd., the couples drove to St. Helen's Island, where they ate with 3,000 friends and relations, were given rosaries, crucifixes and photographs of Pope Pius XII--all these tokens sent with the apostolic blessing of His Holiness.

The 210 young people were Jocists, members of a Belgian-born youth movement, Jeunesse Ouvriere Chretienne (Christian Working Youth), which militantly aims to Christianize the ranks of labor (TIME, Sept. 26). For eight years Jocism's most vigorous leader in Canada has been Father Roy, 40, a onetime newsboy who belongs to the same religious order (Oblates of Mary Immaculate) as Quebec's Cardinal Villeneuve. To Father Roy, 50,000 Canadian Jocists, aged 14 to 25, look for spiritual inspiration. The mass marriage was his biggest effort to date in providing it. It would, he thought, offset "all the unfavorable publicity that marriage is getting in the world's divorce courts."

Believing that 50% of young people are intellectually unprepared for marriage, 20% financially unready, Father Roy put his Jocist candidates through exhaustive preparation, weeded them from 400 to 105 couples. The chosen ones he sent to lectures, both in mixed and segregated groups, on the medical, economic, social and ethical aspects of marriage. After the weddings, Father Roy hoped that many of the couples would postpone honeymooning for three months, rather than get acquainted in a hotel room. Average age of the men--all of them employed at around $25 a week--was 26, of the women, who were to give up their jobs if they were employed, 23. According to Jocism's rules, the weddings automatically ended their membership in the movement. But Father Roy got around that by launching for young married couples a new Ligue Ouvriere Catholique (Catholic Workers' League), with similar aims.

Father Roy's motto for Jocism is: "On Guard For Christ, Young Workers!" He has yanked many a Catholic off the streets and into his organization. Said he last week: "I speak their own language. When I talk to my boys I don't use any two-dollar words. I'm just one of the boys and we all get along fine. By jingo, we ... are the most patriotic people in the empire. No one is more British."

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.