School of Leaders

 

The leaders school is an important part of the CM structure.

 

The expression " School of Leaders " suggests, at first sight,  a place where courses are given.  But in the Cursillo Movement, there is more to it.

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Indeed, some spiritual and apostolic training sessions in accordance with the basic values of the CM are being given in most dioceses of the MCFC. The names are different : training School, leaders School, chiefs School, rulers School, rollo School, faith School, Curso, etc. The means also are different. To the many school sessions we can add the training days, the conferences, the Aggiornamentos, the Cursillos of the fourth day, the special Ultreyas, etc. These are many of the means which are there to help us to continue our progression toward becoming better Christians and better ferment in our surrounding.

 

However, in accordance with the book "The Fundamental Ideas Of The Cursillo Movement", the word School has also another meaning.  More difficult to define but even more important.

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In the vocabulary of the founders of the movement, this word meant what we could call, in the language of today, a planification and development team.

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Eduardo Bonnin and his companions, who were learning to center themselves on Christ, to study their surrounding and to establish strategies of evangelization, considered themselves as forming a "School".

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At the CM, the School is then, first and before anything else, this team of animators and experts who orient the movement, who contribute to maintain the unique mentality of the CM, and who are trying to improve the Ultreyas (the School is to the Ultreyas what the team is to the cursillo).  They facilitate Group Reunions,  prepare the cursillo team members and seek to ensure everybody’s training, specially its leaders. It is an operational structure as important to the movement as the Secretariat.

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Each diocese who starts the Cursillo Movement must have such a school. It is the first structure to put into place to ensure continuity. The CM implants itself and grows through its School.

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Their group meetings were a school. It is in this meaning that the Fundamental Ideas state : 

"As paradoxal as this may seems, the CM is born from a school and not the reverse. […] The school precedes the Cursillos, since it is within it that it was born, it is within it that it still gets its sustenance and it is from it that it expands. At all times, the school has been – and continues to be – the pillar essential for the continuity and development of the CM. " (no. 530 and 531)