On Tuesday, November 21, a seminar of research organized by the Josemaría Escrivá Center at programs of study was held. The dissertation was at position by Natalia Núñez-Bargueño, a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Castilla-La Mancha who will soon move to the University of Louvain (Belgium) where she has won a scholarship Marie Curie.

She spoke to us about " From the International Union of Catholic Women's Leagues to the World Union of Catholic Women's Organizations (WUCWO)". This association had at the time 36 million members.

Dr. Núñez-Bargueño researches the period from 1945, the end of the Second World War, until the convocation of the Second Vatican Council. She focuses, therefore, on the pontificates of Pius XII and John XXIII. His approach covers several disciplines: programs of study of gender, Intellectual History, Entangled History, Theology and Sociology. She is currently consulting the archives of several countries and has so far worked mainly in the Vatican Archives and those of the Italian Catholic Action.

Her intention is to study the action of these Catholic women in Southern Europe: Italy, France, Spain, Belgium. There are works on the North American Catholic Action, but there are still many works on the relations between them and the actions carried out by European women. 

At seminar she presented some of her findings so far, such as the calls of the Roman Pontiffs (since 1945) for social and civic action by Catholic women, which should not be confined exclusively to the home and the family, although this was obviously an important point. These women participated in international organizations (UN, UNESCO, for example) as advisors on certain issues that had to be addressed in the configuration of the world after the Second World War: for example, decolonization and the training of women in these new countries that were emerging.

You can see the complete seminar here.