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56 C H A P T E R T W O Coming to America The Early History of U.S. Cursillos de Cristiandad For the first time in my life, the grandeur of the Christian’s vocation became clear to me: a holy man, a participant in divine nature, a living temple of the Holy Spirit, a member of Christ, a friend of God, a brother of Jesus, and heir of heaven. —M. Carlos Calatayud Maldonado, 1964 Every week from San Antonio, Texas, I sent letters to cursillistas in Palma to help them continue to live their new way of living. What was occurring there was a distillation, an obsession for the soul. I related my projects, my conversations with friends, commentaries and orations with much happiness, as if I were with them. I had not yet encountered in the United States the possibilities for such an apostolate. —Bernardo Vadell, Los orígenes mallorquines de los Cursillos de Cristiandad en EE. UU. (Texas, 1957–1959) (2008) Carlos Calatayud Maldonado made his Cursillo in Ciudad Real in 1956, at the cusp of the Cursillo weekends’ worldwide expansion. Despite Bishop Jesús Enciso Viana’s 1956 pastoral letter that sent Bonnín into exile and forced the three-day Cursillos and group reunions to operate clandestinely, what were now known as Cursillos de Cristiandad, the Hervás-renamed “Cursillos for Pilgrim Leaders,” supported by both Hervás and Bonnín, began to spread around the globe. Mallorquín and other Spanish cursillistas who knew Bonnín and Hervás introduced the weekend course in spirituality abroad.1 From 1956 until Enciso’s death in 1964, one kind of Cursillo weekend was officially offered—the more ecclesial Hervás weekend. After Enciso’s death, Hervás-influenced CdC weekends became even more prominent, and he was credited with being the founder of the weekend Cursillo. When we examine the first Cursillos brought to the United States in 1957 and attempt to understand them in the context of their Mallorquín origins, it becomes evident that they came to America in the spirit of Coming to America 57 Bonnín’s lay Catholic weekend experience. The two cursillistas responsible for bringing the weekend Cursillo to the United States, Bernardo Vadell and Augustín Palomino, were close friends of Bonnín, whose lay-focused Catholic Cursillos had changed their lives and motivated them to what they believed was the apostolic action of spreading the Cursillos de Cristiandad to the United States. As Vadell indicates in the quotation at the beginning of this chapter, he was deeply invested in Mallorca’s CdC movement, and during his stay in the United States, he kept in frequent contact with his Mallorquín cursillista friends. Vadell and Palomino worked closely with laymen and priests to spread Mallorca ’s Cursillo zeal in Texas. As Catholic Cursillos spread outside of Texas and across the United States, they became a blend of Bonnín’s more lay-focused weekend experience and Hervás’s more ecclesial weekend. It was Mallorquín and mainland Spanish male cursillistas who made a distinctively Mallorquín Christian experience a global Christian movement . From Palma de Mallorca and Ciudad Real, these men first introduced Cursillos to Colombia (1953), Catalonia and Segovia (1954), and Rome (1955), then beyond Europe to the United States (1957), Mexico (1958), Brazil (1962), the Philippines (1962), and Argentina (1964)—countering the isolationism and parochialism that peaked, for Mallorquines, before the Spanish Civil War and World War II.2 Through a weekend-long course in spirituality this branch of Spanish Catholicism migrated, morphed , and impacted Catholic and Protestant cultures around the world. In this chapter, we will examine the early history of U.S. Catholic Cursillos, emphasizing its rapid spread and success, especially among Spanish-speaking Americans. In the United States, Cursillos were conducted exclusively in Spanish from 1957 to 1961. The world’s first Cursillo in English was a men’s weekend in San Angelo, Texas, November 9–12, 1961. Father Fidelis Albrecht, OFM, served as the spiritual director for the weekend which was held just over a month after San Angelo was granted diocesan status. Starting in the 1970s, Protestants who had made a Catholic Cursillo weekend formed a variety of offshoots. Hispanics as well as white, non-Hispanic Catholic men and women all shaped the movement in the United States. Like the original Mallorquín weekend, the first U.S. Catholic Cursillos were offered only to men, but as the wives...

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