MESSINA – The Jesuits: a tradition in Messina. We publish an excursus on the topic Renato Zafarana, retired principal and member of MEIC, ecclesial movement of cultural commitment. Professor Zafarana also makes a final appeal so that this relationship is not lost.
In the first half of the 16th century, a fruitful cultural and institutional collaboration was established between the recently approved Society of Jesus and the far-sighted ruling class of Messina, informed of the high cultural level of the fathers. Messina was thus one of the very first places in the world where the Society of Jesus settled.
Messina welcomes the Jesuits
Following epistolary agreements between St. Ignatius and the Senate of Messina, the first ten fathers of the Society of Jesus arrived in the city on 8 April 1548 and immediately started lessons for youth and missionary activity.
The collaboration between Senators and the Order thus led to the birth of Primum ac Prototypum Collegium Societatis Iesuthe first college ever in the world founded by the Order also for external students not destined for the priesthood.
With papal approval, the Company intended to start both a college for adolescents and a college in the city Studium where they would continue and perfect their studies with a confessional orientation. The Senate, on the other hand, favored a “secular” culture as was the case in the main Italian universities.
After alternating and complex events that continued for years, the Studium with superior teachings he remained in the management of the city. The Jesuits founded and maintained the leadership of their own Collegium. Since then, the apostolic-cultural mission of the Jesuits in Messina has significantly contributed to forming the city’s ruling class up until today with the opening of numerous colleges and schools of all levels, without neglecting the Christian education of the people.
Essential chronology of the buildings and churches built by the Jesuits in the city in the 476 years of their presence in the city
From the early years, the Company spread its presence in the city by purchasing and reopening for worship on the archbishop’s mandate numerous ancient convents, churches and houses for spiritual exercises even outside the city. But the fathers wanted to consolidate and characterize their privileged relationship with the Messina community also with the construction of new artistic churches and superb buildings to make them places of worship, schools, professed houses, colleges and novitiates. Today, unfortunately, it is no longer possible to admire the architectural beauty of those buildings in Messina at the time because they were either destroyed or seriously damaged by the earthquakes of 1783 and 1908 or by war events.
Our city has in fact hosted the following structures: the church of S. Nicolò dei Gentiluomini and the Casa Professa (1715-1908). The Novitiate (1576-1908), House of Probation. The church of S. Maria la Nativity (1603-1908). The Collegium Prototypum (1608-1767, due to expulsion of the Jesuits from Sicily; falls in 1908). The Third Probation House of S. Francesco Saverio with the adjacent church of S. Carlo (1635-1689, destroyed for military reasons). The church of S. Giovanni Battista (1747-1783). The Collegio S. Francesco Saverio (1689-1767, due to the expulsion of the Jesuits from Sicily, demolished after 1908).
With the return of the Jesuits to the city, in 1884, and after the destruction and deaths caused by the 1908 earthquake, we witnessed a renewed planning with the construction in the city centre, in 1925, of the S. Ignazio College open to secondary education and, in 1933, with the inauguration of the adjacent Church of S. Maria della Scala, both buildings demolished in 1975 for complex reasons, in the absolute disinterest of the people of Messina. Today, a small elegant church dedicated, like the previous one, to S. Maria della Scala is open for worship in the same place by the Jesuits.
A presence that must not end
The presence of the Jesuits in Messina – which began way back in 1548 and has reached, overcoming the vicissitudes of history, up to the present day with their now small presence – seems to be reaching its epilogue. It is sad to note that the imminent and probable abandonment of Messina by the Order (there is no news on the arrival of other fathers) is taking place in the absolute indifference of the Messina community, incapable of evaluating the gravity of the cultural, civil and Christian loss that it will be added to the many others experienced by the city in its recent past.
Prof. Renato Zafarana (Meic Messina member)
