CAFOD V ATD Fourth World

Fr Joseph Wresinski, Priest and founder of ATD Fourth World

Fr Ray and other bloggers have a piece up about the enormous salary of the Chief Executive of CAFOD. Other posters and commentators are talking of stopping their funding to an organisation which claims to help poverty, yet gives such vast sums to its workers.

I used to work for an organisation called ATD Fourth World in London. It was ATD Fourth World that opened my eyes to the suffering of the poor in the UK. Prior to my experience of a couple of years within the organisation I knew nothing or little of the poverty that condemens hundreds of thousands within our own country to suffering and exclusion.

It was started by a French priest called Fr Joseph Wresinski. He was born into poverty and began serving at Mass from an early age. His desire for the priesthood grew, but he grew up in deep poverty. After he left the seminary, he was sent to Noisy-le-Grand, near Paris, where his mission was to evangelise the poor in the slums who lived there in post-war France. Many priests had come and gone and been rejected. Yet, by Providence, he was sent there and when approached by a small boy of the town, a slum, was asked by the boy if he had any money. He replied that he had nothing save the clothes he stood in.

The boy went back to the town's people and said, "See I have found a priest who has nothing!" His popularity grew and his pastoral work among the very poor of Noisy-le-Grand bore incredible fruit. He was greatly loved, admired and adored by the very poor. He devoted his life to serving them and in time, developed an organisation called ATD Fourth World, which would, in time, reach as far as 27 countries worldwide, combatting and fighting social exclusion wherever it was found.

He promised the very poor..."I will not rest until your story is told in the UN and every major institution in the land. He did not rest until he had October 17 officially recognised as a UN day to recognise extreme poverty." He set up ATD Fourth World with volunteers. Every volunteer lived on a bare minimum in solidarity with the poor with whom they lived and from whom they learned about the realities and indignities of extreme poverty and exclusion. It is now a big movement in France and ATD Fourth World has a base here in the UK. Still, its workers live on a minimum income.

Perhaps the big charities like CAFOD could learn from ATD Fourth World, that it is in emptying ourselves of our wealth, that our giving to the poor becomes truly giving. If we are earning £70,000 off the backs of the poor, then one has to wonder whether we are helping anyone but ourselves. To learn more about ATD Fourth World, click here.