In January 2024, we will celebrate the 75th anniversary of the first Cursillo de Cristiandad, which occurs in the Monastery of San Honorato in Randa, Mallorca. It was the culmination and continuity of an arduous work of study, reflection and experimentation carried out during the preparation for the Catholic Action Youth Pilgrimage to Santiago de Compostela, held in August 1948. In this process, a new form of evangelisation was configured, oriented primarily to those far from God and the Church, taking different elements of the already existing Cursillos of Catholic Action (Cursillo de Adelantados and Cursillo de Jefes de Peregrinos) and adapting them for a new purpose.
After the pilgrimage to Santiago, projecting an ardent apostolic enthusiasm and a clear pastoral conviction, a new Cursillo was programmed, already oriented to the evangelisation of the youth of Mallorca, to make possible that the essential experience of Christianity, the experience of the encounter with God, reached everyone, even those who lived on the margins of religion.
That Cursillo, held between the 7th and 10th of January 1949, meant, by the grace of the Holy Spirit and the availability of the team of lay people and priests, the beginning of a new reality of evangelisation, different from the previous by its approach, purpose and meaning. It was the first Cursillo de Cristiandad as such in history.
