Ruvo di Puglia (Italy). The Educating Community of Ruvo di Puglia, in the Province of Our Lady of Good Counsel (IMR) celebrates 90 years of presence and continues the journey of re-signifying the work in the territory.
A year of celebrations for the 90th anniversary of Sacred Heart Institute which has had numerous events. The last is scheduled for 16 and 17 November 2019, with the show “From 1929 … a dream that continues” by Annabella Tedone (Kuziba Theater) and with the participation of oratorians, animators, volunteers, past pupils.
Sr. Marija Peče, Visiting Councilor for the Canonical Visitation of Ruvo, the Provincial, Sr. Mara Tagliaferri, and the civil authorities will be present at this event.
The FMA of the Community of Ruvo write: “The chronicle of the community, written daily by one of the sisters and preserved in the historical archive of the house, the first page relates that November 6, 1929, marked the arrival in Ruvo di Puglia of the first Daughters of Mary Help of Christians. “The year of the Lord 1929, under the glorious pontificate of St. Pius XI, reigning in the State King Vittorio Emanuele III, the Diocese His Eminence Rev. Msgr. Andrea Taccone, and the Institute of the Daughters of Mary Help of Christians, Rev. Mother Luisa Vaschetti, marks the date of foundation of Sacred Heart Institute in Ruvo di Puglia”.
Thanks to the benefactor who donates the family home, the community is established and extraordinary activities are immediately born for the 1920s such as: professional school with cutting and sewing, embroidery, knitwear workshops; after-school care and school for literacy; Festive oratory, and catechism. All the most particular elements of the Preventive System are present, which can be summarized in the trinomial dear to Don Bosco: joy, study / work, and prayer.
Education in the faith, which in Salesian Pedagogy is translated into Educating by evangelizing and Evangelizing by educating, has always been a primary commitment of the FMA and, since the 1990s, it has also been expressed in the commitment to form animators.
The vocational fruitfulness is certainly to be considered the thermometer of the educational and formative quality that both the Oratory and the whole Salesian work of Ruvo have achieved in these 90 years.
Today, after almost a century, the challenge that the Daughters of Mary Help of Christians wanted to respond to was to relocate in the territory, both at an educational and a social level, to re-signify the presence of the Salesian charism in Ruvo di Puglia.
The answer has seen the community engaged in a planning supported by a very wide network in the territory. The priority criterion adopted for this process is in fact networking in the territory.
The Professional School is today the CIOFS/FP Puglia, Training Center and Employment Agency accredited in the Puglia Region, which operates with competent and prepared human resources for adolescents in compulsory education, young people looking for work and skills, women, immigrants, unemployed of various ages; the after-school program is part of the Oratory Project and is carried out by young people and adults, animators and volunteers, who make available competence and educational passion; the festive Oratory has multiplied the energies to become a daily Oratory, following a path of shared planning.
The FMA community of Sacred Heart Institute of Ruvo, in addition to actively participating in the construction of the Ruvo SOLIDale Project, has worked building and/or enhancing synergies with diocesan and city Caritas, parish Caritas, Department of Social Policies of Ruvo di Puglia, Members of the Salesian Family of Ruvo, We x You and other private social associations, committing ourselves in a privileged way to the formation of the laity.
The experience of the town table, born from a survey on local poverty and experienced since October 2016, is proof of a desire to get back in the game and give a sign of closeness to the people as an outgoing Church.
The real miracle seen in these years is the growth and perseverance of many volunteers. Formation is certainly the key word for everything. The community, in collaboration with volunteers and lay collaborators, continues the process of redesigning the FMA work in Ruvo di Puglia, so that it will become an increasingly significant presence in the territory.
Involving and training young people and adult laity is the path we are trying to follow in order to arrive at the goal of building a socio-educational project to be carried out in co-responsibility, within a Foundation of participation to be established soon.”
