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Felix Morlion

Fr Felix (Andrew) Morlion o.p. (May 16, 1904 – December 10, 1987) was a Belgian member of the Order of Preachers (Latin: Ordo Praedicatorum) or Dominicans of the Belgian Province which explains the abbreviation o.p. behind his name. He was a preacher, journalist, film and art critic and writer. He was known for his anti-communism and and anti-fascism, defending Christian values and for being a representative of Neo-Scholasticism. He founded several institutions and among them universities in Latin America and Europe.

Morlion was born in a lower middle class Catholic Flemish family in Dixmude, as the son of an Flemish schoolteacher and a mother who was a shopkeeper. His first name was André (Andrew) and he had two younger sisters, Marthe and Aline. During the First World War the family stayed as refugees in England (Luton) and in France (Rouen). The family returned in 1919 to Furnes where they lived since 1911. He finished his secondary school in Ostend in 1921 and went to the Catholic University of Louvain to study Engineering, which he abandoned in two years later. Joining the order of the Preachers in 1923, he got a neo scholastic education in Ghent and in Louvain. As Dominican he got a new name which was Felix. From the end of the 1920s he started to write articles for the publications of the Dominicans and the Catholic newspapers. In 1930 he was assigned to stay with the Dominicans in Antwerp to work in the apostolate of the press like the magazine De Waarheid (the Truth) and cinema. In 1931 he became involved in the Catholic Cinema Action movement in Belgium, as the founder of the Catholic Film Documentation (DOCIP). He worked with Canon Abel Brohée, head of the Belgian Catholic Cinema Action and president of International Catholic Office for Cinema - OCIC. In the current of the 1930s Morlion launched also the Offensive movement with young Flemish Catholics to restore, confirm and strengthen the Catholic unity to counter the secularisation of society. As he considered communism and fascism (the Nazis) as the enemy of Catholicism he developed also a political action with his anti-communist actions financed by Belgian financial groups. In 1934 the founded the Catholic Press Central and three years later he was working with Hein Hoeben (1899-1942)of the Catholic World Press, which was the secretary of the International Catholic Press Union (UCIP). When the Nazis invaded Belgian on May 10, 1940 Morlion did leave the country with the intention to seek refuge in the United States but he stuck from the end of June 1940 to the end of May 1941 in Portugal. In Lisbon he founded the International Press Agency Pro Deo or the Central Institute for Information and propaganda (CIP). Early June 1941 Morlion did finally arrive in New York, where he organized in a few weeks a new branch of the CIP. He did present himself as the general ecclesiastic assistant of the International Pro Deo Union, and director of the press center with offices in Lisbon. He travelled from august till October 1941 to South America to establish a network of correspondents for his press agency. At this return, the American Center of Information Pro Deo was founded as a non-profit organization and as a legal entity in New York on October 26 1941. In January 1942 the newly founded OSS related with Morlion and his Press agency to contribute with intelligence from outside the USA. Morlion did have also some activities with the American Army to promote democracy through radio broadcastings towards Europe. For this activity he built a network with European Christian democrats and among them Don Luigi Sturzo. In the Spring 1944 he travelled from the USA back to Portugal and North Africa, where he established a network of informants for his press agency. In the summer of 1944 Morlion arrived from Algiers in Italy, using the contacts and introductions through Don Luigi Sturzo still exiled in the United States. In Rome he did found the International University of Social Studies Pro Deo, of which he became president in 1946. Here he continued his pre-war anti-communist activity which was to contain and to counter communism in Italy. As in the 1930s he considered it a priority to use mass media as cinema and press for his apostolate of evangelisation. Known is the contribution that the priest gave to two films by Roberto Rossellini, appointed by the Italian right as a refounding director of a Catholic Neorealism, or Stromboli (Land of God) and Francis, jester of God. The attempt will, however, vain above all for the typical ambiguous nature of the director's films, which undergo the spectator's interpretation, and therefore unable to convey a strong and unique message. .In the 1950s he was active in Latin America where he founded branches of the International University of Social Studies Pro Deo, which became later independent Catholic Universities. In these early years of the cold war, he was again in contact with former staff member of the OSS Alan Dulles who was now active in the CIA. At the end of these 1950s Morlion builded close relations with the Jewish world which explained his role in the Second Vatican Council. In the early 1960s Morlion developped also contacts with the Soviets and played a role in the Cuban crise of 1962. . In the mid 1970s he was asked to retire of the International University of Social Studies Pro Deo, which was transformed into the Libera Università Internazionale degli Studi Sociali Guido Carli –Luiss University. In the following years he continued to publish on social and political issues which he believed were important to establish peace in the world according the values of the Gospel. In december 1987 he had a stroke walking on the streets of New York and died in a hospital.