From 1878 to 1903 - 02 |
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Yet the Prior General and his Curia seemed to be resigned to the fate of the extinction of the Order, and they sat back and awaited the end. At that time, however, Fr Augustine Ciasca O.S.A., one of the outstanding oriental scholars and linguists of the time and later a cardinal did something more than passively mourn about the condition of the Order.
He conferred with two of his fellow Augustinians, Fr Luigi Sepiacci O.S.A., a consultor of the Congregation for the Propagation of the Faith (“Propaganda Fide”), and Fr Vincent Sernenza O.S.A..
Image (below): A view of Carpineto, the home town of Leo XIII.
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Together they brought the parlous condition of the Order to the attention of Pope Leo XIII, and asked him to provide for its existence.
The Pope called the Prior General, Fr Giovanni Belluomini O.S.A., for a conference on 17th December 1880. Whether the Pope asked him to resign as head of the Order is not certain, but, at any rate, Leo chose to appoint a Commissary General, i.e., one commissioned directly by the Pope than elected by the Augustinian Order.
The Commissary General would rule the Order in place of the holy but aged Fr Belluomini, who, in turn, was permitted to retain the title Prior General until death, without, however, any jurisdiction over the Order. The new General appointed by Leo XIII on 27th December 1880 was Fr Pacifico Antonio Neno, then Provincial of the Province of Saint Thomas of Villanova in the United States.
Fr Neno, born at Grotte di Castro, Italy, in 1833, entered the Augustinian Order in 1850 and was ordained to the priesthood in the Basilica of Saint John Lateran at Rome in 1816. He came to the United States in 1865 to act as Regent of Studies in the ecclesiastical department of Villanova College (now Villanova University), Pennsylvania.
At the Provincial Chapter of 1878 he was elected Prior Provincial of the Province of Saint Thomas of Villanova (which at that time was the sole Province for the whole United States).
Neno arrived in Rome on 18th February 1881. In the next month Leo XIII named a new Curia to assist him. It included Fr Luigi Sepiacci as Procurator General, and the following as Assistants General: Fr Augustine Ciasca, Fr Luigi Mattioli, Fr Vincent Semenza and Fr Paul Haekel. (It can be noted that all three Augustinians who had first approached the Pope about the Order’s depleted and demoralized state were amongst the five friars that Leo XIII nominated to assist Neno.)
Neno immediately set out to reopen convents to be used as novitiates for candidates to the Order. The renewal of Augustinian life in Italy was felt throughout the whole Order. The Pope cooperated wholeheartedly with all the salutary acts of the Prior General.
Since the Convent of St Augustine in Rome, the motherhouse of the Order, had been almost entirely taken over by the Italian Government, Fr Neno with the encouragement and permission of the Pope purchased the Palazzo Cesi, situated near the Vatican - thanks to the generosity of the provinces of the Order in Chile and the United States and to the ex-Empress of Austria, Marianna.
(Continued on the next page.)
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