Don Guanella at the origins of contemporary Christian pedagogy
by Fabrizio Fabrizi
"Jesus increased in stature, wisdom, and grace" (Luke 2:52). The brilliant synthesis of the Gospel provides the essential dimensions of human education: physical maturation, intellectual development, openness to the supernatural. Starting from this foundation, Christian educators of the 20th century presents some personalities who have marked the contemporary educational reflection and offers interesting contributions for current pedagogical commitment.
In this volume (Rome, Anicia, 2025, 237 p.), the number of names that come to mind is immediately striking: five authors and seven educators: the former are authoritative scholars, with solid academic culture and valid practical experience; the latter bearers of a powerful prophecy about humanity, born from the single, ever-renewing evangelical source.
Vittore Mariani (a professor at the Catholic University and the volume's coordinator), Stefano Biancotto (a Guanellian), Patrizia Pirioni (Minime Oblates of the Heart of Mary), Giuseppe Trevisi (a social worker), and Antonio Valentini (president of the Guanellian Cooperators) offer portraits of seven educators "characterized by a Christian life, Christians among many, Catholics among many, dedicated full-time to others, in total dedication to God, the Church, and society, in free and selfless service." From the early twentieth century to the third millennium, their thoughts and works have accompanied people in discovering and navigating life's path.
The privilege of opening this illustrious gallery falls to Luigi Guanella, whose thought seems to prefigure all the elements that would later be developed by Christian pedagogy. Dying in 1915, he bequeathed to the new century a deeper perspective on humanity, an anthropological sensitivity rooted in the fatherhood of God. Valentini outlines his pedagogy starting from an "essential principle: every person, regardless of their condition, has a dignity and an inestimable value that must be recognized and cultivated." His youthful experiences at the Cottolengo Institute and alongside Don Bosco were crucial to Don Guanella's formation, from which he drew "a pedagogical vision based on loving kindness, trust, and the value of the person." His preference for those who were practically abandoned at the time (orphans, the poor, the disabled, the lonely elderly, and the sick) was based on "the conviction that even those considered incapable by society had an inestimable value in the eyes of God."
For Guanella, education is a work of the heart, an expression of human love and Christian charity, to be achieved in a family atmosphere (he wanted his works to be called Houses) and in trust in Providence, a concrete manifestation of God's fatherhood. Education is achieved above all through closeness and sharing, in the certainty that everyone has something to offer and is rich in potential and beauty, even if obscured by physical or intellectual frailties. Through study and work, Guanella proposed in his Houses an "overcoming of the welfare mentality" to restore dignity and responsibility to every person, despite their limitations. At the end of his effective summary, Valentini illustrates how Guanellian pedagogy remains effective today, even in supporting today's educational emergencies, which are often linked to new forms of poverty.
At the opposite chronological extreme, the authors place Don Luigi Giussani (1922-2005), founder of Communion and Liberation, who already in the 50s noticed the first signs of advancing secularization and, in a dimension of strong community belonging, helped many generations of young people rediscover the reasonableness and human appropriateness of faith, also giving new impetus to the public presence of Catholics.
Among them, other great figures who combined reflection and practice, making educational work the privileged instrument of a luminous Christian witness.
Brescian teacher Margherita Tonoli (1876-1947) was struck by the widespread child poverty created by industrial development in Milan. Thus, in 1908, she founded the Piccola Opera della Salvezza del Fanciullo (Little Work for the Salvation of Children), a children's organization to take in abandoned or disadvantaged children, providing them with a home and a family.
Don Primo Mazzolari (1890-1959), who as a simple parish priest of Bozzolo, a small town in the Cremona area, exercised a very high moral teaching through his writings and public speeches, educating the consciences of young people and adults to peace, social justice, and respect for the poor, often with healthy provocative attitudes towards lay and religious authorities, forcefully recalling their spirit of service for the common good.
Don Carlo Gnocchi (1902-1956), a distinguished spiritual director at prestigious Milanese institutions and later chaplain to the Alpine troops in Russia. Known universally as "the father of the maimed" for his work rehabilitating young war victims, he explored the depths of the mystery of suffering, of every innocent child and of an entire society devastated by grief and destruction, in the conviction that a people could be reborn only with "the restoration of the person of Christ in every man."
Don Lorenzo Milani (1923-1967), a highly cultured Florentine priest of noble origins, was 'exiled' to Barbiana, a tiny hamlet in the Mugello area, for the courage of his unconventional ideas. Teaching just a few children, he began a profound cultural and pedagogical revolution that culminated in the famous Letter to a teacher, which gave a new physiognomy to the Italian school.
Giuseppe Lazzati (1909-1986), founder of the secular Institute of Christ the King, member of the Constituent Assembly and then of the Italian Parliament, professor and for many years rector of the Catholic University. He formed a ruling class that brought the renewal inspired by the Second Vatican Council into political and social action, with the responsibility of building "a human city on a human scale."