ALESSANDRINO MAZZUCCHI was born in Pianello on 26 April 1878 when Don Carlo Coppini was still parish priest in the village, three years before Don Luigi Guanella arrived there to take over the work and continue it. He was the second child of Natale and Domenica Mazzucchi; her first daughter was a two-year-old girl, also from Alexandria in homage to her paternal grandfather who lived in the house with his son and daughter-in-law. But Alexandrina died shortly after, at the age of four, leaving great regret like her as a good and intelligent child.
Little Alessandro was followed two years later by his little brother Salvatore who went with him to Como to study, but not because he wanted to be a priest; instead he became a highly esteemed doctor and notary in Como, Dongo and in the notary college of Appiano Gentile. In 1883 the fourth child, Leonardo, arrived: at the age of five his older brothers left, at the age of seven his father died and Alessandrino remained with his good and strong mother "martyrella of love of pain", as Don Guanella called her.
Father Natale's family had already been marked by other difficulties as well: wealthy, the Mazzucchis had gone through difficult moments due to a failed trust action against them.
A relative took advantage of the trust, speculating on all the money entrusted to him in administration; he went bankrupt and left for America without giving any more news.
The Mazzucchis saved the land that remained under their administration, but the young Natale had to suspend his secondary studies begun in Milan to receive from an uncle and manage a shop-tavern in the village. He also became nervous and a little irascible, preoccupied and weakened in health, so that at the first somewhat substantial ailment his fiber almost suddenly gave way. However for Alessandrino's family these previous stories did not mean poverty, but moments of difficulty and tension, which the kindness of his wife and children could not always contain.
In this environment, so common and a little sad, Alessandrino's happy and serene kindness blossomed, of which different but concordant testimonies have survived from his mother, his younger brother, Leonardo, as well as from the parish priest Don Guanella, the masters of Pianello and from Como, of his educators from Como, as well as of old schoolmates who, questioned many years later, still remembered with freshness the face and example of his fellow pupil at the school of S. Filippo.
The environment of the house, shop and inn in the village worried his mother who kept him away from the place and advised him to stay at home quietly and collected; and the child got used to controlling himself and avoiding dangers.
Then a certain severity of religious education, while it tended to delay Communion, led instead to anticipate Confession. At the age of five from Alexandria he began to go to school and the teacher immediately prepared him for the first confession which then became monthly, the religious and moral sensitivity of the child had reason to grow intensely.
At the age of five he was ready to go to school with the good teacher of the village Giuseppina Lombardini of Morbegno; at the age of eight he passed the completion exams, i.e. third grade, to the admiration of the didactic director of Como, Mr. Cattaneo. His mother advised him to study and he, looking at her with her serene and wide-open eyes, laughed and laughed; because one reading was enough for him to learn his lesson very well. He learned to write, for fun, correctly both with the right hand and with the left; and he laughed about it. His companions called him "apron" because he always wore a large apron; but he knew how to accept jokes without taking offense, so that they soon left her in peace…
He loved to draw; simple, clean designs; houses, gardens, mountains, people and often churches and chapels with altar boys. And he continued with his exemplary and serene demeanor, stimulating even for his restless little companions.
One day Don Guanella, after a fervent sermon on the priesthood, met Alessandrino and his companions and stopping for a moment, he took off his hat, placed it on Alessandrino's head saying: “Would you like it like this? Would you like to become a priest?”. As soon as he arrived home, still excited, he told his mother: “The parish priest wanted to try his hat on my head, saying if I wanted to become a priest! Oh, if I could!" And that time he cried.
It was therefore decided to send him to the Little House of Providence of Don Guanella, where he could study. On 26 August 1888 Alessandrino Mazzucchi, with his mother and younger brother Salvatore, arrived from Pianello in Como, in the Piccola Casa della Provvidenza. He was the first boy who, as a seminarian, inaugurated the small seminary that Don Guanella had already hoped to establish first in Chiavenna or Campodolcino, fifteen years earlier, and which he had then somehow started in Traona in 1880-81, immediately closed by prefect of Sondrio.
From this day and for almost two years, the stories of Alessandrino and the Piccola Casa come together, because this now becomes the boy's definitive home and family. He remained there making himself esteemed and well-liked for his cheerfulness, amiability, love for the Eucharist and for his delicate charity towards the suffering guests hosted in the House. It was precisely an act of generosity towards a sick companion that was at the origin of his sudden and premature death on 21 June 1890 on the feast of San Luigi Gonzaga.
 Alessandrino Mazzucchi.pdf |