Democrazia sociale e democrazia politica in Léon Harmel

Pierre Louis Léon Harmel (1829-1915), a man of deep Catholic faith, a businessman and social reformer, and an exponent of French social Catholicism, was one of those who played a decisive role in opening the Church to the problems of modern society. He lived through the profound economic and social changes caused by the industrial revolution. Sensitive to the miserable conditions of the working class, he wanted to make his wool factory in Val des Bois in the municipality of Warmeriville a sort of community in which the fundamental principles of Christian justice and the modern aspirations of organized workers could merge. She claimed the responsibility of the State in the order of social justice, encouraged the formation of the first autonomous trade unions, the only ones that could foster the authentic promotion of workers, and promoted the first Christian Workers' Congress from which the democratic Unions of Christian inspiration would be born. He was a prophet of a Christian democracy that he wanted decisively popular, and is representative of the evolution that emerged at the beginning of the 19th century among French Catholics that would lead to the affirmation of a political democracy of Christian inspiration.