Pope Leo has approved a decree declaring venerable Henri Caffarel, a French YCW chaplain, who later founded the Teams of Our Lady movement.
During an audience with Cardinal Marcello Semeraro, prefect of the Dicastery for the Causes of Saints, on 23 March 2026, Pope Leo authorised the promulgation of a decree recognising “the heroic virtues of the Servant of God Henri Caffarel, diocesan priest, founder of the ‘Equipes Notre Dame’ (Teams of Our Lady) and the ‘Fraternité Notre-Dame de la Résurrection’ (Our Lady of the Resurrection Fraternity),” Vatican News reports.
As happens so often, press reports play down or even ignore the fact that he began his priestly ministry as a YCW chaplain. Let’s start with that experience.
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YCW chaplain
Born on 30 July 1903 in Lyon, France, Henri Caffarel was ordained a priest for the Diocese of Paris on 19 April 1930.
Almost immediately, he was appointed as chaplain to the national secretariat of the Young Christian Workers (JOC or YCW) movement, where he worked closely with many leaders.
In his biography of Charles de Foucould (Charles de Foucauld et ses premiers disciples), Fr René Voillaume, founder of the Little Brothers of Jesus and the Little Sisters of the Gospel, recalled a letter he had received from Henri Caffarel in 1934 explaining how he accompanied YCW leaders, André Hess and Georges Gaboriau, in the creation of a small worker community:
Among the seeds of this fecundity, there was one which touched us in particular and was to be like a prefiguration of an announcement of what our fraternity would one day be, although at the time we did not yet perceive it as such: it was the admirable initiative of two YCW workers, one of whom, André Hess, was a true friend of mine.
In April 1934, I received the following letter from Henri Caffarel:
“I think of you and your brothers and sisters often; I am deeply one of you. And after sharing my prayers with you, I come to ask for yours and those of your community for a work that the Lord Jesus has entrusted to me. I am so sure of your understanding and your fraternal prayers that you are one of the first people I turn to: André Hess has left the Young Christian Workers (YCW) [after completing his term as national secretary] and has taken a job at Renault as a skilled labourer. At the end of each day, he retires to his small working-class room in the heart of Billancourt, with his best friend, who is also a former YCW leader. And there, as at work, they pray, they worship, they love the Father, united with Jesus in the name of the entire vast working class that surrounds them and that they want to save at all costs. They wish to be, indeed they are, the voluntary representatives of the entire suffering working class before God, offering up in a continuing offertory the sins, the miseries, the distress of all these abandoned souls.
“For them, it is a vocation similar to yours, very similar and I am impressed. They share the same desire of becoming one with those whom one wishes to save, in order to save them better; of becoming a worker with the workers, living among them, in the same living conditions, of becoming workers just as you have become Muslim among the Muslims.
“It seems to me that this new work is the logical culmination of the great charitable effort undertaken for the past fifty years. First, there was an interest in working conditions in order to change them; initially by the promotion of Catholic professional organisations. Then, without downplaying their importance of these organisations, the Young Christian Workers (YCW) arrived proclaiming Christ, and were primarily concerned with forming apostles who would radiate their influence throughout their communities in order to transform them morally and materially.
“And finally, perhaps complementing this initial work, comes André’s new undertaking, which may attract many workers, whose main objective is to establish centers of intense charity and true contemplation right in the heart of the working class, among the working masses.
“Perhaps (but again, this is what I am trying to discern from the Lord’s will, and it is possible that it will be different), we will one day see small communities of four or five workers in major industrial centres, living the Gospel fully, leading the workers to say, “See how they love one another,” and revealing to them Christ who wants to save them.
“The Cardinal of Paris, who admirably encouraged André Hess, asked me to accompany and assist them. It is a great joy, but also a great responsibility. That is why, with great confidence, I come to ask for the prayers of the dear community of El-Abiodh. This is, however, quite confidential; I would not want anyone other than the younger brothers of El-Abiodh to know of this letter.”
And three months later, Fr Caffarel wrote to Brother André, whom he had known for a long time: “I commend André Hess and Georges Gaboriau, his companion, to your prayers. You understand their vocation, help them, so that the two communities may truly be sisters… Why shouldn’t there be a connection between them? Does Father Voillaume have any objection to this? It seems to me that it would broaden their souls, their prayers, and their lives.”
We naturally accepted this profound communion in a shared contemplative vocation of intercession, and we remained in contact with André Hess for some time. Little was said about this experiment, which remained discreet and almost hidden. Unfortunately, I have neither a precise recollection nor any document that would allow me to know what became of our relationship with André and Georges. Indeed, this experiment in contemplative life within the working class encountered misunderstandings and even strong opposition, to the point that it had to cease. Could this generous initiative, too, have come too soon, at a time when it could not yet be understood?
Teams of Our Lady
This work with the YCW and more generally in the field of Catholic Action deepened Caffarel’s conviction that laypeople – not just the clergy – were called to holiness in the midst of ordinary life, a conviction that would profoundly shape everything that followed.
After completing his work with the YCW, Fr Caffarel was appointed to the French Catholic Action secretariat for the media, including radio and film. From 1936 until 1939, he organised spiritual retreats, particularly for students.
In 1938, when a young couple sought his guidance on faithfully living their marriage vows, Caffarel replied, “Let us journey together.” This encounter led to the first meeting of what would become the Teams of Our Lady on 25 February 1939.
The idea took off and rapidly developed into a movement that now exists in eighty countries.
After World War II, in 1947, Fr Caffarel drafted the charter for the movement, which also took the title of “Teams of Our Lady.”
The Charter makes robust demands on couples including the practices of daily prayer together and a monthly “Sitting Down,” a time of personal reflection. “Once you have seized the spirit of Teams, you will have no trouble in agreeing to their discipline,” Caffarel said. Living the Gospel in a couple’s life was, in his view, “the way to holiness.”
Caffarel also insisted on the mutual enrichment of the sacraments of Orders and Marriage as “complementary” sacraments responding to the vocation of love.
The Teams of Our Lady website explains Fr Caffarel’s spirituality of marriage and the movement as follows:
Father Caffarel (1903-1996) had a deeply held conviction that couples were made for happiness. Marriage is one way towards this because the love received and the love given are sources of happiness. For him, human love was fundamentally a way to gain access to God, through Jesus Christ. Over fifty years ago, Father Caffarel took the initiative to gather together couples to reflect with them on the sacrament of marriage and conjugal life. After meeting with a few couples, Father Caffarel decided to explore the mystery of the sacrament of marriage and to bring his theological reflections to the Church. The latter were always based on meditation of the Word of God, but also on the observation and participation of couples as well as the contributions of confirmed theologians. Based on detailed surveys, he elaborated a renewed outlook of Christian marriage and of sexuality. For him, the union of a man and a woman was the sign that not only revealed and represented the mystery of the Christ-Church union, but also contained and reflected it. The conjugal community was a cell of the Church and participated therefore in the life of the Church, where Christ accomplished his mission as prophet, priest and shepherd.
In 1945, Fr Caffarel also founded a magazine L’Anneau d’Or (The Golden Ring) dealing with marital and family spirituality, which had a great impact and was widely circulated in Catholic circles, especially in France, until its demise in 1967.
The Teams continued to grow and develop throughout the 1950s and 1960s, with large gatherings taking place at Lourdes in 1954, Rome in 1959, and Lourdes again in 1965.
Concerned with marriage preparation, in 1956, he launched the Centres de Préparation au Mariage (CPM) (Marriage Preparation Centers ), which were initially linked to the Équipes Notre-Dame (Teams of Our Lady), before becoming an independent movement.
In 1957, he launched a small magazine, Cahiers sur l’oraison (Notebooks on Prayer ), which, along with correspondence courses that he developed, occupied his time for many years until 1989.
Vatican II
In 1960, Pope John XXIII appointed him to the Preparatory Commission on Lay Apostolate for the Second Vatican Council and he continued to play an active role as a peritus during the Council itself.
As a result, he was able to share his renewed theological understanding of marriage
Below are extracts from two documents (in Cardijn’s personal archives) that Henri Caffarel drafted for the Preparatory Commission:
Fr Caffarel’s thinking on conjugal spirituality ran well ahead of official Church teaching. Indeed, he faced strong criticism from other more traditional theologians, including Fr Sebastian Tromp SJ, who served as secretary of the Preparatory Theological Commission for Vatican II and also for the conciliar Doctrinal Commission.
Later, Pope now St John Paul II noted that Caffarel, “anticipating the fruitful directions of the Second Vatican Council,” set forth the call to holiness as integral to marital and family life, particularly as expressed in Lumen Gentium, §11.
Gaudium et Spes also echoed the very convictions Caffarel had been teaching since the late 1930s, speaking of the reality of married sexuality and spirituality and inviting further reflection on it, affirming that the love made visible through husband and wife is a symbol of the love of God who is Love.
The Council made a significant shift by using the language of personalism — describing marriage as a “partnership of love” – and elevated mutual love to equal standing with procreation, declaring that “the intimate union of marriage, as the mutual giving of two persons, and the good of the children demand total fidelity from the spouses.”
Caffarel had championed similar ideas in the Teams and in L’Anneau d’Or for nearly two decades before the Council began.
Final years
In 1973, he retired to a house in Troussures, which he transformed into a house of prayer.
He died in Beauvais, France on 18 September 1996.
Read more
Pope Leo advances six causes for sainthood (Vatican News)
Henri Caffarel (Wikipedia)
Fr Henri Caffarel (Modern Day Saint)
John Paul II, Address to Teams of Our Lady 2003 (Vatican)
Books by Henri Caffarel (English translations)
Love and grace in marriage (Internet Archive)
Being present to God: Letters on prayer (Internet Archive)
