importance in terms of the development of preventive ideas and preventive undertakings. They also offer some analogies on different levels with what would be Don Bosco's experience some decades later.295
In fact the festive congregation or oratory and the arts and crafts technical school created by Pavoni anticipated Don Bosco's initiatives by several decades, with echoes far and wide.296 Don Bosco might have also had to hand some of the Regulations drawn up by the educator from Brescia. Rosmini himself, in a letter dated December 1853, brought Don Bosco’s attention to the printing establishment created by Pavoni and suggested a similar initiative.297
Lodovico Pavoni remarks: “Brescia was provident and had not failed by then to create congregations and oratories for young people to receive their Christian education in. Only one class of child was left out, the class most in need of such a charitable Institute. These were the children who were ostracised and in bad shape, children who hardly dared to join the established groups of civilised and learned youngsters”.298
This is how the congregation-oratory of St. Louis came about in 1812. In 1819, Lodovico Pavoni was asked to run the rectory of the church of St. Barnabas and he annexed an oratory to it, and later on, in 1821, a hospice for artisans who were orphans or abandoned.299
In 1840 Lodovico Pavoni opened up a section for deaf and mute artisans next to the hospice. Finally, in 1843, to guarantee ongoing support for the various educational initiatives, he brought all of his co- helpers, priests and lay people (he called them coadjutor workshop heads), together in the
Congregation of the Children of Mary Immaculate, encouraged by the Decretum Laudis he had received in 1843 and by canonical approval given in 1847.
The goal of the new religious institution was to provide “an education for the lowest class which, neglected as it is, becomes a hothouse for nurturing an evil populace which is the source of real havoc both politically and morally, that is, poor children who feel compelled by their circumstances and needs to drop out of school and abandon the vigilant care of wise teachers who would like them to learn a skill”.300 The hospice in particular was expected to be “a school of good morals for abandoned and unskilled youths, in order to make them useful to the Church and to society”.301 The sacred family of religious educators aimed at committing themselves “tirelessly to the welfare of abandoned youth, wholeheartedly doing their best to provide young people with a Christian, religious and professional education”.302 The holistic aspects are emphasised repeatedly: personal and social, temporal and eternal, for children who need everything. The goal is that of providing “poor orphans or abandoned
metodo educativo pavoniano (192-220).
295In the decree of the Congregation of Rites on the heroicness of Pavoni’s virtues, 5 June 1947, we find: “Porro Servus
Dei stupendorum operum, quae paulo post S. Joannes Bosco amplissime protuli, praecursor merito est habendus” AAS
39 (1947): 642.
296 Cf. Lodovico Pavoni e il suo tempo. Acts of the Study Congress, (Brescia, 30 March 1985. Milan: Ancora 1986), 307
pages. On ‘Brescian Don Bosco, F. Molinari writes Rigore critico e agiografia: il venerabile Lodovico Pavoni (. 13-
28); on the basic educational institution, R. Cantù, L’Istituto di S. Barnaba, fondato in Brescia nel 1821 dal venerabile
L. Pavoni (125-174).
297Cf Epistolario completo of A. Rosmini Serbati, vol 12, 140; Don Bosco answered on 29 December 1853, Em 1 211 298Organizzazione e Regolamento, in Raccolta,. 9.
299Nel Prospetto delle Arti e de’ Lavori attualmente in corso nel Pio Istituto a profitto ed educazione de’ giovani
ricoverati, appendix toRegolamento del Pio Istituto, in Raccolta, pp. 57-58, the following are listed: Printing and
copper-plate engraving arts, Bookbinding, stationery, Silversmithing arts, Ironworks, Carpentry arts, Wood and metal
turning, Shoemaking
300 Regolamento del Pio Istituto, in Raccolta, 40.
301 Regole dei Fratelli consacrati, in Raccolta, 61
302 Regole dei Fratelli consacrati, in Raccolta, 62. There is a striking insistence on “religious Brothers tirelessly busy on
behalf of poor, abandoned youth”; “..to be concerned about perfecting oneself and working tirelessly for the good of
one’s neighbour” (Regole fondamentali, in Raccolta,. 63-64)