Nn 1899 Don Guanella recommended to his religious: «Study the nature and history of the great works of Cottolengo, Bosco and the like and each one should confidently conform his own spirit to their direction». He certainly could not have imagined that he himself would be – to quote Dante – the third «among so much wisdom» on the podium of the Italian champions of charity between the XNUMXth and XNUMXth centuries. But he was right when he recommended the study of those he considered masters. Since then, the Daughters of Santa Maria della Provvidenza and the Servants of Charity have also accomplished «great works», along the path traced by the Founder.
Although mainly dedicated to the “practical” works of assistance, education and pastoral care, the Guanellian congregations have nevertheless cultivated a particular attention to their history. This is where the activity of the Guanellian Study Center comes in, which, following the indications of the Council, has been promoting the study and knowledge of the Founder and of what arose from his charism of charity for almost 50 years. Today all his writings and his correspondence (about 3500 letters) are available – also digitally – fundamental tools for entering into his spirit. If Don Guanella continues to be present through his two Congregations, today “making history” of the Guanellian Works means looking not exclusively at his life, but also at another perspective, that of the fruits that arose from the seed of charity that he threw into the hearts of the many children that he continues to generate in the Spirit.
Issue no. 4 of «Pagine Guanelliane» has been released, the historiography magazine that since 2021 has begun digging into the archives to bring out «old things and new things». It opens with a long article on Aurelio Bacciarini (1873-1935), one of the most illustrious disciples of
Luigi Guanella, the first parish priest of San Giuseppe al Trionfale in 1913, bishop of Lugano from 1917, who in the Holy Year 1925 led two diocesan pilgrimages to Rome, in which 1800 faithful from Ticino participated. Riccardo Bernabei and Fabrizio Fabrizi retrace the context and development of those two events, based on contemporary sources and 26 texts by the bishop, almost all speeches “recovered” from the notebooks kept in the Archive of the Centro Studi Guanelliani. In addition to offering a privileged observation point on Bacciarini's pastoral activity, the article takes us back a century to «offer a minimal but detailed contribution to the reconstruction of the ways in which the Jubilee was lived at the time, a religious practice that has marked the history of the Church for 725 years and marks a privileged time of grace and conversion for all Catholics».
The contribution by Bernabei and Fabrizi is followed by a contribution by Alejandro M. Dieguez, of the Vatican Apostolic Archives, who studied the papers of the Relief Commission of the Secretariat of State, created in the tragic years of the Second World War by Giovanni Battista Montini to provide assistance and relief to the populations affected by the war events. Through numerous epistolary documents, some small but equally significant events are illustrated, which involved the Guanellian congregations, highlighting their charitable work and the total, trusting devotion to the Pope, between sincere gratitude and multiple requests, that Pius XII and the future Paul-
They willingly complied, certain that they were entrusting themselves to capable people who were sincerely dedicated to the poorest.
In the magazine, two religious men, Giovanni Russo and Barbara Brunalli, also address the beginnings of the Guanellian works in Messina and Loreto.
In the City of the Strait, the Servants of Charity were entrusted with a difficult task in 1966: the pastoral care of a vast peripheral area, practically devoid of religious assistance and also marked by profound social degradation. In a decade of intense and widespread work, they managed to redeem the population from a human and Christian point of view, thanks above all to the commitment of Don Giuseppe Bellanova (1922-1978), a true Guanellian apostle of Messina.
The arrival of the Daughters of St. Mary of Providence near the Holy House in Loreto dates back to 1927. They took over an old convent to make it a shelter for "girls, young indigents, unable to do any kind of work", as requested by the eminent doctor Gustavo Modena (1876-1958), director of the mental asylum in Ancona, who worked to have them settle in the town in the Marche. He had already met them in Rome, appreciating their work in the Hospice Pio X and had understood the importance of a structure for women who did not have the clinical conditions to be admitted to common mental asylums or hospitals, but still needed a place to be welcomed and cared for; it was the same intuition that had moved Don Guanella, made his own by the ready availability of the nuns who opened a house of charity near that of the Provident Mother.