Page 146 - Reflections on St. Joseph

2 – Shedding light on the years of foundation is important so as to understand the finality and
spirit of the Congregation itself. I will do this from a principally historical point of view,
avoiding personal interpretations, which are not based on the facts. In this first study we will
look at the years from 1870 – 1878, those years which determined in the life of Marello the
priest his vocation and decision to start up a Religious Congregation. We will examine first the
lay dimensions gathering them from the happenings of the Church of that time. In a further
study, we will seek to understand how it came to pass from an attempt to form a lay based
association to that of one of religious life.

3 – The year 1870 saw in Italy, in Rome, two events which humanly speaking were opposed to
one another: the First Vatican Council and the end of the temporal power of the Pope with the
taking of Rome by the Italians. From the first event of the Council, in so far as it was unable to
complete its work, there were born and developed always more various spiritual and apostolic
initiatives, such as catechesis (the text on catechesis had been discussed during the Council but
there had not been time to bring it to a vote in the council chambers), the liturgy, the missionary
movement, etc. After the taking of Rome, the conflict between the Church and the Italian
government increased. In vain was the attempt to relieve this conflict with the “Guarentigie”
laws (1871), seeking to guarantee for the Pope a freedom which was watched over by
government offices, following the principle of a “free Church in a free State”, which could be
translated a “free Church but under a free State”.

4 – In the midst of the spiritual tensions which emerged after the Council (which developed over
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the last thirty years of the 19 Century) and the political and civil tensions which produced a
true laceration in the consciences of Italian Catholics, the figure of the Pope gained increasing
importance, which in the Council had received the highest importance with the definition of
his Primacy and Infallibility.

The persecuted Pope became ever more the loved Pope, the Pope defended by a Catholic laity
which became more and more ardent in the face of the liberal-masonic attacks. Pius IX, refusing
the protection of the Italian state, entrusted himself the public oblations of the faithful through
the Peter’s Pence, which, born in France through the efforts of Montalembert (1859), was given
an official status in 1871 (August 15) with the Encyclical “Saepe, Venerabiles Fratres”.

5 – This was like a sign which brought Catholics, first of all the youth, to rally around the Pope
and to organize themselves into Catholic Associations of Catholic Youth, which were born in
those years, with the precise purpose of upholding the rights of the Church and to be close to
the Pope in all things and for all things. The first “Italian Catholic Youth Society” was born in
Bologna with Mario Fani and the Youth of Acquaderno, on February 11, 1867: it was more like
a development of the “Marian Congregations” which flourished in the Jesuit colleges and which
now came out from hiding with their “pure and strong” programs, in which the word “pure”
expressed the Marian youth spirituality and “strong” gave them a push to place themselves at
the service of the Pope and the Church.

Other Associations were born in Florence in 1870, Rome in 1871, and Turin the “Sebastian
Valfre Circle” in that same year: this was the work of Bishop Balma, about whom the cleric
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Reflections on st. joseph