Cursillo: What can we do for the parishes?

By Tanya Connor
The Catholic Free Press
You can make a Cursillo – a retreat-like weekend – once in your life.
But you can spend the rest of your life living out what you gain there. Leaders of the Cursillo movement in the Worcester Diocese are working on new – and old – ways to help people do that.
Lay Director George J. Leite Jr. said Cursillo leaders are asking, “What can we do for the parishes; as a movement as a whole, how can we build a partnership?”
“We always ask (parishes) for candidates (to make the weekend), but what do we give back?” he asked.
Mr. Leite, of Holy Family of Nazareth Parish in Leominster, made his weekend in June 1999; his wife, Joyce, made hers in August that year. Last October he became lay director for the movement in the Worcester Diocese, a two-year, renewable term.
“It’s been an easy transition,” Mr. Leite said. “Denise had left things in tremendous shape. She was incredibly organized.” (Denise Thomas, of St. Joseph Parish in Charlton, was lay director for the previous five years.)
“Cursillo is a lay movement, established by a layman,” said her pastor, Father Robert A. Grattaroti, spiritual director for the movement locally. (The associate spiritual director is Father Nicholas Desimone, pastor of St. Mary Parish in Uxbridge.)
“Historically, the leaders have always been lay people, which, when you think of it, is pretty unique, given the times when it was founded, in the 1940s,” Father Grattaroti said. “Even to this day there is a lay leader in every diocese where there is a Cursillo, and that’s pretty international, because it’s an international movement.”    
On Cursillo weekends, which have the same basic content and structure everywhere, team members challenge candidates to evangelize their environments – home, workplace, social group, etc. – and give them methods for doing so.     
“Evangelization within our own parishes is very important,” Mr. Leite said. “We need to be able to show an active, vibrant community. And that active, energetic Catholicism is contagious – people want to be part of that.”
Asked if evangelization of the parish environment is needed more now than in the past, Mr. Leite said, “I think we’re recognizing that more. And it’s not to take away from evangelization at work or at home or anywhere … I think we’re looking at it more as adding another challenge.”
Leaders already ask new Cursillistas to serve their parishes after making the weekend, but now are thinking about making that more specific by distributing lists of ministries that their parishes are seeking help with, he said.
He said his pastor, Father José A. Rodríguez, expressed a desire for Cursillo to have a more visible presence in the parish.
Another reason for trying to get Cursillistas more involved in their parishes is that they have so many other things to choose from, like school sports and community activities. In general, people today are separated from each other and have less of a sense of being in a community, he said.
Mr. Leite said Cursillo’s founder, Eduardo Bonnín, said, “We have weekends to have more small groups” – not the other way around. In these regular small-group gatherings, Cursillistas encourage one another in their attempts to pray, receive spiritual formation and evangelize.
The Cursillo weekend isn’t an end it itself, but part of a movement aimed at bringing Christians closer to Christ and equipping them to bring other people closer to Christ and to help their environments become more Christian.
Mr. Leite said another plan is to start up “leaders school” again for the movement in the Worcester Diocese. Unlike in the past, this leaders school would be open to all Cursillistas, not just leaders of the movement. It would help everyone deepen their understanding of the Cursillo method.
“We’re all baptized priest, prophet and king,” and called to be leaders within our communities, Mr. Leite said.
“The Cursillo watchword is ‘make a friend, be a friend, bring a friend to Christ,’” said Father Grattaroti. “George has certainly done that as long as I’ve known him.”

– For more information see www.fourthday.org or contact Susan Leighton at sleighton1958@gmail.com or 508-498-6934.