Saint Jerome Emiliani

Jerome Emiliani, whom the Venetians called Miani, was born in 1486 and died in Somasca in 1537. He is the patron saint of abandoned young people, and to understand why, you have to look at what he did, not what he said. In Venice he founded the Ospedale del Bersaglio — the one known today as Santa Maria dei Derelitti — and for a year he ran the Ospedale degli Incurabili. Then he set up homes for orphans in Bergamo, Somasca, Como, Pavia and Brescia, and in Milan the orphanage the Milanese still know as the Martinitt. But the truly new thing is something else, and it’s almost a social invention. Jerome created the first **workshop school**: the orphans he took in didn’t just learn to read and pray, they learned a trade, working under a master hired for the purpose. You have to understand how revolutionary that was: at the time, apprenticeship was reserved for members of the guilds; it was a closed privilege. He opened it to boys who had no one. Giving an orphan a trade meant giving him the one thing nobody could ever take away from him. He founded the Clerics Regular of Somasca, was proclaimed a saint in 1767, and a statue of him stands in Saint Peter’s among those of the great founders. Among the pupils who passed through the Somascan schools are Alessandro Manzoni, Saint Louis Guanella and Saint John Baptist Scalabrini. If your name is Jerome, you also celebrate on September 30, but today is this Jerome’s day. Five hundred years ago someone understood that what a boy on his own needs isn’t charity: it’s a trade.