ORPHANOTROPHY. – A charitable and beneficent institution created for the care and education of poor orphans.
Paganism showed little concern for orphans; the only exception was the Athenians, who had decreed that the children of those fallen in war should be raised at public expense until the age of 18; and Plato’s prescription: “Orphans must be entrusted to the care of public guardians. One must fear the solitude of the orphan and the souls of the deceased parents. Each person must love the unfortunate orphan, of whom they are the guardian, as if he were their own son, and must be as diligent and careful in administering his goods as if they were their own; indeed, even more so” (cf. *Leges*, 926-28).
Among the Hebrews, however, the care of widows and orphans was insistently recommended; for them, indeed, the remnants of the harvest of grain, olives, and grapes were reserved (Deut. 24:21): “God was proclaimed the ‘Father of orphans’” (Ps. 67:6).
With the advent of Christianity, charity, animated by the word and example of Jesus, began to flourish abundantly (v. CHARITY, HISTORY OF), and among its various expressions was that directed toward orphans, all the more so because there were many who had become orphans due to the martyrdom of their parents. Their care was entrusted in particular to bishops, who attended to them through deacons and generally placed them with various families, as can be gathered from the testimonies of the Fathers and the Acts of the Martyrs. “Orphans and widows are always commended to the love of Christians. The bishop must be brought up at the expense of the Church, and must ensure that girls, when they reach marriageable age, are united to Christian martyrs, and that boys learn either a trade or a craft and are provided with the necessary tools and placed in a position to earn a living, so that they do not burden the shoulders of the Church more than necessary” (cf. *Constit. Apost.*, IV, 2: PG 1, 867). This care of the Church is particularly highlighted 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 significant privileges to orphanages, which were under the jurisdiction of the bishop, who governed them through directors called orphanotrophs (*Codex Justinianus*, I, 1, tit. III, 32).
In the Middle Ages, the flourishing of monastic institutions greatly expanded the field of charity toward orphans, who, initially educated in rooms attached to hospitals, later had their own buildings; moreover, monasteries took in many orphans, teaching them letters and commerce.
In the 16th and 17th centuries, religious orders and congregations, both male and female, which arose throughout Europe, earned singular merits in the education of orphans and in the founding of special institutions for them: 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., stimulating the rise of other public and private institutions and foundations. Before and after them, the popes took care to gather orphans and offer them the means to make a position for themselves in life: suffice it to mention Paul III, who established the Company of Orphans with a bull of 7 February 1540; Innocent XII, who in 1693 took over the institution founded by Tommaso Odescalchi in 1684, expanding it and later incorporating it into the Ospizio dei Poveri of Sixtus V, generously supporting it with his revenues.
From the French Revolution onward, the secularization of charitable works imposed by modern states, which proved unequal to the task of replacing the suppressed religious orders, once again spurred the activity of numerous new congregations of religious men and women (among whose founders, to name a few, were G. Giuseppe Cottolengo, St. John Bosco, Murialdo, Don Orione, and Don Guanella), almost all of which include among their fields of charitable action the care and education of orphans, both in private orphanages and in those of public charity. To these were added charitable organizations of various kinds and names, with the aim of seeking, collecting, and administering the funds necessary for the maintenance and operation of these institutions.