Progressio (1940–2017) was an international development charity that enabled poor communities to solve their own problems by support from skilled workers. The organisation attempted to influence decisionmakers, secular and religious alike, to support liberation movements and to guard against human rights abuses. It also lobbied legislators to change policies that keep people poor. It had been known earlier as The Catholic Institute for International Relations and the Sword of the Spirit. On 14 September 2016, Progressio announced that, due to funding issues, it was shutting down operations, it closed in March 2017. History Cardinal Arthur Hinsley founded Sword of the Spirit in August 1940. The organization was later known as the Catholic Institute of International Relations (CIIR) and then became Progressio. It was credited as "Probably Hinsley's most memorable act". Its long-term goal was to put into effect Christian social teachings as an alternative to totalitarianism and extremism of all ideologies. Its short-term goal was to promote the awareness and thebacceptance of the five Peace Points proposed by Pius XII soon after his election in 1939;like: the defence of small nations, the right to life, disarmament, some new kind of League of Nations and a plea for the moral principles of justice and love. Although founded by the cardinal, the movement was intended to be a lay organization. The first vice-president was Christopher Dawson, but practical organization was in the hands of Richard O'Sullivan KC; Barbara Ward; and Professor A. C. F. Beales of London University and his wife, Freda. The aims behind the movement were set out in a letter to The Times (December 21, 1941) that was signed jointly by the Archbishops of Canterbury and York (Cosmo Gordon Lang and William Temple), by Cardinal Hinsley and by the Moderator of the Free Churches (W. H. Armstrong). Hinsley, hoping to make the movement ecumenical, organised two interdenominational mass meetings in London in May 1941, but in the course of 1941, the Vatican insisted for Catholic and Protestant social movements to be segregated, and a parallel movement under the name Religion and Life was inaugurated for non-Catholics. In 1965, the name Catholic Institute for International Relations (CIIR) was adopted. In early 1967 Mildred Mary Nevile, who had been working at CIIR since 1958, became the secretary-general of the CIIR and proposed change. She championed the idea that it would concentrate on the development required to end poverty in the world.