The Pact of the Catacombs

To mark the 60th anniversary of the Pact of the Catacombs, we held a special commemorative prayer service with the Dorothy Day pilgrimage group at the Domitilla Catacombs on Saturday 29 November 2025.

Participants at the Lay Mission and Vocation Conference held from 9-13 October 2024 celebrated Mass at the Domitilla Catacombs adopting a final declaration recalling the original Pact of the Catacombs.

This was the final declaration of the participants in the Lay Mission and Vocation Conference held in Rome from 9-13 October 2024.

Protagonists of Synodality: A Message from Lay Leaders to the Second Session of the XVI Ordinary General Assembly of the Synod 

We, lay leaders, animators and chaplains from 30 countries representing millions of Catholics in 10 international movements of specialized Catholic action convened in Rome to reflect on the past, present, and future of the lay apostolate alongside the meeting of the Synod on Synodality. Together at the 

Domitilla Catacombs, we reaffirm the Catacombs’ Pact of the Poor and Servant Church (1965), and we: 

1. give thanks to God for Pope Francis, for his ministry and for the synodal process;
2. lament the suffering caused by social injustice, marginalization, and violence wounding our world and celebrate the witness of peacemakers;
3. denounce the sins and wounds of clericalism and all forms of power abuse that inhibit the organized apostolate and we acknowledge our own limitations and fragility;
4. affirm the fundamental baptismal vocation of all the baptized, no matter what stage, to become protagonists of the apostolate and to proclaim in word and action the Reign of God; 
5. celebrate the prophetic work of the Holy Spirit through our members in hundreds of local realities worldwide as legacies of our ancestors who walked before us including our leaders who were at the Second Vatican Council as members and auditors; and 
6. confirm our specific mission as actors of the lay apostolate in the “sanctification of the world from within as a leaven” (Lumen Gentium, 31), living in various realities and circumstances in family and social life in the world.

We, therefore, collegially, ask the XVI Ordinary General Assembly of the Synod in these final days of the Second Session to: 

1. affirm the primacy of the baptismal vocation and the urgent need to create a church where all the baptized can be protagonists in the formation of responsible citizens in the world;
2. recognize that there are more than one methodological pathways for synodality, including the inductive and action-oriented method of the see-judge-act and the Review of Life; and
3. more explicitly acknowledge and engage the role of the organized lay apostolate as autonomous structures of synodality led by the laity at the local, national, and international levels.

Together, as international lay movements, we:

1. pledge to continue to work together as movements of specialized Catholic action (MIACS) in common projects at the intersection of faith and life; and
2. recommit ourselves here at the Domitilla Catacombs, individually and collectively, to live with Hope the option for the poor.

Organizers included the International Young Christian Workers (IYCW-JOCI); International Coordination of Young Christian Workers (ICYCW-CIJOC); International Young Catholic Students (IYCS-JECI); International Movement of Catholic Agricultural and Rural Youth (MIJARC); International Movement for the Apostolate of Independent Milieux (MIAMSI); World Movement of Christian Workers (WMCW-MMTC); International Movement for the Apostolate of Children: MIDADE. International Catholic Movement of Intellectuals: (ICMICA-MIIC Pax Romana); International Movement of Catholic Students (IMCS-MIEC Pax Romana), the Australian Cardijn Institute (Australia), Dorothy Day Center (Manhattan University), Centre International Cardijn (Lille, France), Centro Internacional Cardijn (Bogota, Colombia), Laudato Si’ Center/International Youth Training Centre (Chiang Mai, Thailand), Cardijn Community International Africa (CCIA).

DOWNLOAD

Click here to download the Protagonists of Synodality Message

Join us for a mass at the Domitilla Catacombs on Saturday 21 October 2023 at 3pm.

We will remember Blessed Enrique Angelelli and Pepe Palacio, who co-founded the YCW (JOC) in the Diocese of Cordoba. They were both born in 1923. And they were both killed by military, Pepe in December 1975, and +Enrique and his companions in August 1976.

Pepe Palacio

Pepe, a trade union leader, was active for many years with the YCW and also with the Christian Workers Movement. He had only recently been elected as the first lay collaborator (chaplain) of the International YCW and he had only recently returned to Argentina from Bogota, Colombia, where he took part in a Workers Meeting organised by the IYCW before he “disappeared.”

Amalia Castano de Palacio

In another kind of martyrdom, Amalia, Pepe’s wife was left to raise their family alone. She died without eve finding out what had happened to her husband. Years later after the end of the dictatorship, their son, Jose Luis, was able to confirm his death at the hands of the military from information in the national archives.

Enrique Angelelli

As well as being a YCW chaplain, Enrique Angelelli was also a chaplain to the students movement, the JUC. And as a bishop in La Rioja, he worked closely with leaders from the rural Specialised Catholic Action movements.

He was also an original signatory of the Pact of the Catacombs adopted by Vatican II bishops, who wished to commit themselves to the poor and to the poor. Their pact was inspired by Joseph Cardijn’s consecration to the working class in 1903.

Now, during the Synod on Synodality, we remember them as pioneers of a synodal partnership between laity and clergy, working together to build the Kingdom of God.

Mass @ The Catacombs

Welcome to join us in the Domitilla Catacombs at 6pm on Saturday 21 October. Please contact us via Whatsapp (see details below), by email: aci@australiancardijninstitute.org for more details, by QR code, or by clicking on button below.