Orphanage

ORPHANAGE. - An institution of charity and welfare, created for the care and education of poor orphans.

Paganism had taken little care of orphans; praiseworthy exceptions were the Athenians, who had ordained that the children of those fallen in war be raised until the age of 18 at the expense of the State; and the prescription of Plato: "Orphans must be entrusted to the care of public guardians. One must fear the loneliness of the orphan and the souls of the deceased parents. Each one must love the unfortunate orphan, of whom he is the guardian, as if he were his own child, and must be as solicitous and diligent in administering his property as if it were his own; indeed, even more so" (cf. Laws, 926-28).

To the Hebrews, on the other hand, the care of the widow and the orphan was insistently recommended; for them, in fact, the remnants of the harvest of grain, olives and grapes were reserved (Deut., 24, 21): and God was proclaimed the "Father of orphans" (Ps. 67, 6).

With the advent of Christianity, beneficence, animated by the word and example of Jesus, began to flourish luxuriantly (v. CHARITY, HISTORY of), and among its various manifestations there was also that directed toward orphans, all the more so since many were left as such through the martyrdom of their parents. Their care was entrusted in a particular way to the bishops, who attended to it by means of the deacons and generally handed them over to various families, according to the testimonies that can be gathered from the Fathers and the Acts of the martyrs. "Orphans and widows are always commended to the love of Christians. The bishop must raise them at the expense of the Church, and take care that the girls, once they reach the age of marriage, be joined to Christian husbands, and that the boys learn either an art or a trade and be provided with the necessary tools and placed in a position to earn their living, so that they may no longer weigh more than necessary on the shoulders of the Church" (cf. Apostolic Constitutions, IV, 2: PG 1, 867). This care of the Church is given particular emphasis by St. Augustine in his letters (cf. Ep., 252-55: PL 33, 1068-70). The Christian emperors, beginning with Constantine the Great, and in particular Justinian, granted notable privileges to orphanotrophies. These were under the jurisdiction of the bishop, who governed them by means of directors called orphanotrophi (Code of Justinian, I, I, tit. III, 32).

In the Middle Ages the flourishing of monastic institutions increasingly widened the field of beneficence toward orphans, who, educated first in premises attached to hospitals, later had houses of their own; and the monasteries, moreover, gathered many of them, to whom they taught letters and commerce.

Singular merits were then gathered, in the education of orphans and in the founding of special institutes for them, by the religious Orders and congregations, male and female, that arose everywhere in the 16th and 17th centuries: for example, St. Jerome Emiliani, the "father of orphans," with his Somaschi, St. Joseph Calasanz with his Piarists, St. Vincent de Paul with his Daughters of Charity, etc., also spurring the rise of other institutions and public and private foundations. Before and after them, the popes had at heart to gather orphans and offer them the means to make a position for themselves in life: it suffices to mention Paul III, who instituted the "Company of Orphans" with a bull of 7 February 1540; Innocent XII, who in 1693 took over the orphanotrophy instituted by Tommaso Odescalchi in 1684, enlarging it, later aggregating it to the "Hospice of the Poor" of Sixtus V and amply supporting it with its revenues.

From the French Revolution onward, the laicization of charitable works imposed by modern States, which later proved unequal to the task of replacing the suppressed religious Orders, gave a renewed flourishing impulse to the activity of very numerous new Congregations of religious men and women (it suffices to mention among the founders, in our country: St. Joseph Cottolengo, St. John Bosco, Murialdo, Fr. Orione, Fr. Guanella), almost all of which include among their fields of charitable action the care and education of orphans both in private orphanotrophies and in those of public welfare. To these were added charitable organizations of various kinds and names, with the purpose of seeking out, collecting and administering the funds necessary for the maintenance and operation of the institutes.

Celestino Testore