Now I am the first to admit that the link between British Home Children and Naples is tenuous, but that should be no reason to miss out on a story.
Added to which more accurately we are in Pompeii, and not Naples, and it is the modern city of Pompeii, rather than the one destroyed in 79 AD when Vesuvius threw a wobbler.
And having established all of that, the focus for the story is The Basilica of the Shrine of Our Lady of the Rosary, Santuario della Madonna del Rosario, and the “good works” of Bartolo Longo who restored a dilapidated church and transformed it into what it is today.
What caught my eye was one of those little information panels which announced that
Bartolo “wanted to help children whose parents were incarcerated in prison by providing a place where young people could learn a trade and have a good base for a better future. Some girls would stay until they got married, and their wedding dresses were provided by the charity”.
It is of course nothing new and religious institutions have from the beginning, provided for the “poor, the needy and the disposed”, but standing there I was transformed back to stories of BHC and my own great uncle who shipped out for Canada in 1914.
By which time, the programme of migrating young people across the Atlantic had been well under way for a quarter of a century having begun a little before Bartolo Longo embarked on his charitable work.
I would like to know more about that work, and how it compared with what was going on in the UK.
But my Italian is poor and as, yet I have no experience of dealing with Italian archives, but in the fullness of time I will go digging, if only because one side of the family comes from Naples.
So less a helpful contribution to the study of British Home Children and more “wot I did on our holidays”.
Location; The Basilica of the Shrine of Our Lady of the Rosary, Pompeii
Pictures; The Basilica of the Shrine of Our Lady of the Rosary, 2019 from the collection of Balzano
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| Inside the church, 2019 |
And having established all of that, the focus for the story is The Basilica of the Shrine of Our Lady of the Rosary, Santuario della Madonna del Rosario, and the “good works” of Bartolo Longo who restored a dilapidated church and transformed it into what it is today.
What caught my eye was one of those little information panels which announced that
Bartolo “wanted to help children whose parents were incarcerated in prison by providing a place where young people could learn a trade and have a good base for a better future. Some girls would stay until they got married, and their wedding dresses were provided by the charity”.
It is of course nothing new and religious institutions have from the beginning, provided for the “poor, the needy and the disposed”, but standing there I was transformed back to stories of BHC and my own great uncle who shipped out for Canada in 1914.
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| Approaching the Santuario della Madonna del Rosario, 2019 |
I would like to know more about that work, and how it compared with what was going on in the UK.
But my Italian is poor and as, yet I have no experience of dealing with Italian archives, but in the fullness of time I will go digging, if only because one side of the family comes from Naples.
So less a helpful contribution to the study of British Home Children and more “wot I did on our holidays”.
Location; The Basilica of the Shrine of Our Lady of the Rosary, Pompeii
Pictures; The Basilica of the Shrine of Our Lady of the Rosary, 2019 from the collection of Balzano
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