Kairos History
In 1975, Tom Johnson, an attorney and Catholic Cursillista from Miami, Florida, attended an ecumenical Cursillo gathering
in Atlanta, Georgia. Though delegates came from several denominations presenting Cursillo weekends, this Atlanta gathering was heavily
Lutheran. The original Cursillo movement was derived from the Roman Catholic church of Spain.
Tom Johnson had
been imagining a Cursillo program in prison for some months. During the Atlanta meeting Tom learned some of the delegates were planning
a prison weekend in Iowa. Tom approached the Iowa delegate, Pastor Gene Hermeier and asked permission to attend. One week later, Tom
was observing a Cursillo weekend in an Iowa prison. Excited by the experience, he returned to Miami determined to begin Cursillo weekends
in Florida prisons. That first weekend was held at Union Correctional Institution at Raiford, Florida in the fall of 1976.
By
1978, six or seven states were presenting a Cursillo short course in prison. The national Cursillo office in Dallas surveyed these
prison Cursillos and determined they should be ecumenical, and supervised by a central authority. They felt the format should be modified
to better meet inmate needs. Cursillo asked the Florida group to design such a program. The first Kairos was presented in 1979.
Following that first “Kairos” weekend, Cursillo asked other areas who were doing Cursillo weekends in prison to stop using the Cursillo
name and join Kairos.
