Kuifjes katholieke jeugd. De katholieke achtergrond van Hergé. Deel 1 van 2

Following the launch of Steven Spielberg’s ‘Tintin and the Secret of the Unicorn’, l’Osservore Romano hailed Tintin as a ‘catholic hero’. This article demonstrates that the comic originates, more specifically, in conservative and reactionary milieus in Belgian Catholicism. Hergé (ps. for Georges Rémi) designed Tintin for the children’s weekly of a newspaper that, in this period, shared its main themes with the Catholic fascist movement Rex: anti-communism, anti-capitalism, anti-semitism and the fear of ‘secret societies’. The monarchy, however, is sustained, as was common within a more conservative milieu. Both milieus advocated a more important role for the Roman-Catholic Church in the public domain.