A ação social católica de Carlos Alberto de Menezes: da inspiração na espiritualidade vicentina à antecipação das exigências da encíclica Rerum Novarum.

Abstract

Precepts inspired by Vincentian spirituality have, throughout almost two centuries of history, guided the lives of thousands of Christians throughout the world, right up to today. The ways in which these precepts have influenced the life and actions of the engineer from Rio de Janeiro, Carlos Alberto de Menezes – "his" Catholic Social Action – CSA, who in his thesis was nicknamed the Menezian Actions, MA's, undertaken in the Industrial Complex of Camaragibe – CIC, between the years 1891 and 1904 is the object of study of this thesis. In Camaragibe, he was the idealizer and administrator-partner of CIC, having built the first Workers' Village in Latin America. Through a bibliographic research (supported by primary sources – some already digitalized – and others iconographic). I looked for foundations to show that the precepts inspired by the Vincentian spirituality, present in the, MA's, "anticipated" the indications and/or demands made by the encyclical Rerum Novarum – RN, promulgated by Pope Leo XIII in 1891. Taking the social antinomies deriving from the Industrial Capitalist Revolution as a backdrop, the recommendations expressed and/or put forward by the Catholic Church, especially on the basis of this papal document, were contextualized. It was verified how these demands were received and applied in the corporate administration of the CIC, by Menezes, and how they were present in his pioneering actions. It was also a question of the influences on the MA's, of the experiments carried out alone by the industrialists Léon Harmel (in France) and Robert Owen (in the United Kingdom and the United States of America). However, the main objective of this research was to show that precepts inspired by Vincentian spirituality and present in the MA's, "anticipated" the indications and/or demands made by RN.