Cavanis, Anton'Angelo and Marcantonio

CAVANIS, ANTON'ANGELO AND MARCANTONIO. - Priests, the first born in Venice on 16 Jan. 1772, the second on 19 May 1774 to Count Giovanni and a Pasqualigo Basadonna, from whom they received a family upbringing that was distinctly religious and were directed toward the magistracies of the republic. Antonio Angelo soon became secretary of the ducal chancery and Marco Antonio an extraordinary notary; but while the former, on the death of his father (1793), became a priest, the latter continued in his employment, becoming a priest only in 1806. In the last years of the republic they gathered in their own home a cenacle of priests and clerics, with whom they discussed philosophy and apologetics, and they devoted themselves to teaching Christian doctrine in their parish church. From their work with young people and from their experience of their religious needs, Marco Antonio conceived the idea of establishing a Marian Congregation for them. Together with his brother, he, not yet a priest, gathered a good number of them in an old chapel attached to the church of S. Agnese and led them, on feast days, into a large garden: in the Palazzo Da Mosto, near that garden, they then gradually established the Schools of Charity for poor boys and raised them up, amid a thousand difficulties, to the point of making them regular schools of the elementary and secondary course, for both sexes in two distinct branches. Subsequently, in order to provide the schools with directors and teachers, they also founded the Congregation of the Priests and of the Mistresses of the Schools of Charity. The various foundations did great good in Venice and also had some diffusion in the Veneto in recent times. They died, Marco Antonio in Venice on 11 Oct. 1853, Antonio Angelo, blind, on 12 March 1858. Their works survived them. The process of beatification is under way.

Luigi Berra