On Saturday 1st and Sunday 2nd June, the celebrations of the centenary of the foundation of the Scout Group will end in Rocca San Casciano. The program was presented in recent days and includes: Saturday at 4pm the meeting at the Foro Boario, followed by the presentation of the centenary book ‘The return of one hundred steps’ and the photographic exhibition. At 6.30 pm the meeting-debate on the theme ‘Educating for happiness’ will be held, with interventions by Monsignor Erio Castellucci, archbishop of Modena-Nonatola and bishop of Carpi, vice-president of the CEI, the Honorable Rosaria Tassinari, mayor of Rocca since 2009 to 2019 (who wrote the preface to the text), and Don Giovanni Amati, parish priest of Rocca. At 8pm scout and former scout dinner, “with sandrone fire and stew” (registrations in Lavinia’s tobacconist).
On Sunday, again at the Foro Boario at 9.30 am, games for all the children, mass at 11.45 am, at 12.30 pm opening of the food stands “with lunch open to the whole town”, 3 pm group photo, greetings and closing of the open centenary events by bishop Livio Corazza on January 6th.
The foundation of the Guido Negri department, which took place on 6 January 1924, was the work of Don Antonio Tabanelli, a great educator of young people and parish priest of Rocca from 1906 to 1927, remembered thus by the reporter: “At 8 o’clock the young explorers, in their uniforms, and all the young people of the Silvio Pellico Catholic Club attended the parish mass and received Communion. After the Mass, Monsignor Pievano blessed the flame, and said their promises in front of the altar”.
After the arrival of the explorers from Forlì, “the examination carried out by the Provincial Commissioner on our Scouts followed, which were all approved”. In the afternoon, at 3.30 pm, the two teams, with their flames, participated in the solemn Te Deum”. Official speeches, theatrical performances and interventions by the authorities followed. After the explorers’ hymn was sung, “everyone moved to the little theater of the Sisters of the Sacred Family”, where the scouts of Forlì presented the comedy in three acts ‘The assault on the castle’. In this regard, the scouts of Rocca suffered an attack a few years later, when in 1929 the unit was dissolved by the fascist regime, for be reopened in 1947 by the chaplain Don Elmo Montanari, then parish priest of Pieve Salutare. The parish priest Don Giovanni Amati comments: “Even after 100 years, the scout educational method is still valid for the education of children, teenagers and young people”.
