In January 1926, Bishop Aurelio Bacciarini raised a group of women consecrated to God and the apostolate.
His was a prophetic intuition
by Riccardo Bernabei
On 21 January 1926, the notarial deed was signed in the bishop's palace in Lugano by which Bishop Aurelio Bacciarini (1873-1935) founded the Company of Saint Teresa of the Child Jesus.
It all began a few months earlier, on November 10, 1925, on the train returning to the Canton of Ticino the pilgrims he had accompanied to Rome for the Jubilee. Also on the train was Maria Motta (1883-1947), sister of Giuseppe, then one of the most influential politicians in Switzerland. She had obtained an audience with Bacciarini to confide in him her desire to join the Opera Cardinal Ferrari (Compagnia di San Paolo), a secular institution serving the charitable activities of the diocese of Milan.
Aurelio Bacciarini, however, saw in that meeting a sign of God's will: why do elsewhere the good that could be accomplished in the diocese? "As soon as I spoke to him about it," Maria Motta herself recounts, "he said, 'Providence is sending it to me,' and explained [...] that he was thinking of founding a special association or congregation," tasked with overseeing diocesan works. Bacciarini wasted no time, officially establishing the Society within two months.
But it still took time to truly get it off the ground. Maria Motta spent the following months in her native Airolo, working in the hotel her family ran. Only once the tourist season ended, on October 19th, did she board the train to Lugano. She wasn't alone, however; she was accompanied by fellow townswoman Margherita Dotta, her first partner, with whom she moved to the first location, in the Maghetti neighborhood.
The new association would first and foremost provide indispensable support to the Ticino Catholic Women's Union (UFCT), the women's branch of diocesan Catholic Action, by providing its secretariat. According to the bishop, who had identified the women's Catholic Action as the cornerstone of his pastoral work, for it to thrive, women who could dedicate themselves full-time were needed.
A few months later, Monsignor Bacciarini publicly introduced the first "sisters": "I don't know if you have noticed something new [...]. Two young ladies have left their country, their home, their family and have gone to Lugano and settled at the Secretariat [...]. They are two: but I hope that tomorrow there will be four, then six, then twelve, then twenty" (Speech to the General Assembly of the UFCT, Bellinzona, 3 July 1927).
The new foundation was placed under the patronage of Saint Thérèse of Lisieux (1873-1897). The young Carmelite, who had promised to "spend her Heaven doing good on earth," had had a profound impact on the Catholic world of the time, so much so that she was beatified in 1923 and canonized in 1925. Thus, the "young ladies" gathered by Bacciarini were popularly known as the "Teresines," and the first two were soon joined by new companions. Seven of them, on August 23, 1930, took the vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience for the first time, definitively consecrating themselves to God.
The Society was a secular institute, or rather, an association, whose members consecrate themselves with religious vows, but live "in the world" and do not wear the religious habit. Bacciarini's foundation could be considered avant-garde; such institutes were, in fact, a recent innovation in the life of the Church. Only in 1947 was the Apostolic Constitution Provide Mater Ecclesia would have officially recognized them, judging positively their experience, which arose in the first half of the twentieth century "not without a special inspiration of divine Providence" (Pius XII, Provide Mater Ecclesia, February 2, 1947, § 9).
The choice of such a form was due to the particular historical circumstances in which one found oneself. Bacciarini himself recalled it: «Vox temporis vox Dei (The voice of time is the voice of God) [...] The clergy is no longer sufficient, we must train apostles in the male laity, in the female laity who will propagate the kingdom of Jesus by example, by word, by the press, by charity, by all the new possibilities" (Address to the Company of Saint Therese of the Child Jesus, 26 December 1927).
In addition to supporting the Women's Union, the consecrated women engaged in a wide variety of activities, including manual labor in the service of charitable works, assisting parish priests with catechism, and taking care of the accounting and administration of the diocese and seminary.
But even in the fields of communications and the press, the bishop needed the Society. In 1926, he founded "Il Giornale del Popolo," the diocesan newspaper, entrusting its administration to the "Teresine." They also edited other magazines, dedicated to women and families.
The Company continued to grow and, with its work, represented a lifeblood that nourished the life of the diocese. Having moved in 1939 to new and better-equipped headquarters on Via Nassa, still in Lugano, these women, for a century, did incalculable good to the Ticino Church with their humble and hidden work.
But the 1990s brought an unexpected turn in the history of the Society. Bishop Eugenio Corecco occasionally
It hosted some Romanian seminarians, who came into contact with the "Teresine" of Via Nassa. From those relationships, in 1996, the Society's first mission in Romania was born, which has borne extraordinary fruit, considering that over one hundred and forty vocations have been born in the Balkan country, where the institute has sixteen branches.
The centenary was celebrated at the Lugano headquarters on March 17, while in Romania in May a thanksgiving pilgrimage was held to the Marian shrine of Cacica. It was a fitting occasion to remember and give thanks for the good done over a century of history, which continues today along the inscrutable paths of Divine Providence.