Abstract EN:

Robert Garric (1896-1967) was an intellectual and a catholic involved in social action. He was born in a bourgeois family in the Cantal and later attended the Ecole Nornale Supérieure. Life in the WWI trenches brought to Mm vividly the importance of comradeship. He founded in 1921 a catholic educational network, the Equipes Sociales, which offered courses in general knowledge and technical courses to any young people wishing to improve his social standing. The network operated within as well as outside the existing patronage institutions. Garric 's social and intellectual proselytism came together to encourage a deeper dialogue and understanding between social classes which shared a common catholic faith. Following the example of Marechal Lyautey, culture thus became a new ground for discussing social issues and a foundation towards building better social relationships through the education of the best among the younger generation. The Equipes were interested by society's outcasts : people living in town areas such as the popular Parisian quarter of Belleville, where Garric lived for a while, children from the suburbs, the sick in the sanatoriums; the foreigners. They spread a Christian and humanist vision defended by Garric in the Revue des Jeunes or in his teachings at the Sorbonne and in Brazilian and Dutch universities. Believing that social issues are of paramount importance, Garric joined the National Revolution in 1940, becoming head of the Secours National, a wartime charity leaning towards petainism. Out of the public eye after WW2, he gained a final public role as director of Paris Cité Internationale having to deal with an international and new generation.