Public Healt/1- and Social Welfare Work
421
ent sections of the archdiocese. Junior groups were organized in Catholic colleges and high schools to enlist and train students in catechetical work. Rich was the fruit. Within seven years over 3,000 children were being taught by juniors in 40 catechetical centers. 83 The movement has spread to all the dioceses in Texas. Institutes are held annually by local priests, sisters, and laity to train adult Confra- ternity teachers. The year 1947 will long be remembered for the first Regional Inter-American Congress of Confraternities of Christian Doc- trine held in San Antonio, October 23-25. More than 6000 persons at- tended, besides five Archbishops and twenty Bishops from the United States, Mexico and Central America. The Religious communities of men and women throughout the State have done much to foster the aims of the Confraternity by teaching classes and training teachers and there are groups of Sister Catechists who are devoted exclusively to Catechetical work, such as the Missionary Catechists of Divine Providence, Sisters of the Apostolate of the Blessed Sacrament, Missionary Sisters of Our Lady of Guadalupe and others. No effort has been made to list each and every Catholic activity or agency that has and is contributing to the general social welfare, by raising the level of education, by improving the facilities to care for the sick and poor, by working to carry instruction in the faith to everyone, or by the ceaseless efforts to help the poor, the orphans, the widows, the aged, and the outcast. A few of the activities, the agencies, and the groups of men and women engaged in these noble pursuits have been presented to give an idea of the extent, variety and general scope of what the Church and the Catholics in the State are doing to feed those that hunger, to give drink to those who thirst, to clothe the naked, to ease the pain of those that suffer, to restore faith and hope to the unfortunate, and to rescue those that have fallen from grace and virtue by rehabilitating them and restoring them to a useful place in society. all of which is but the exemplification of the greatest of virtues-Charity.
83 Archdiocese of San Antonio, DiamMtd Jubilee. 291.
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