TURIN SOCIETY OF SAINT JOSEPH. - It was founded in Turin on 19 March 1873 by the servant of God Fr. Leonardo Murialdo, to give poor and abandoned youth a Christian education, professional and civic formation under the protection of St. Joseph. Fr. Giulio Costantino and Fr. Eugenio Reffo were its first able co-workers in the noble enterprise which later developed into schools, oratories, agricultural and professional, literary and technical schools, family homes, after-school programs, boarding schools and semi-boarding schools, parishes and missions with various works of social and cultural assistance, recreational and above all religious, in the most working-class neighborhoods.
From Turin the Congregation spread to Rivoli, Pinerolo, Vigone, Sommariva del Bosco, Pocapaglia, Milan, Bergamo, S. Margherita Ligure. From Piedmont, with the same program, it radiated into the Veneto and Emilia: to Venice, Padua, Treviso, Oderzo, Conegliano, Vicenza, Montecchio Maggiore, Arcugnano, Thiene, Riva del Garda, Modena, Cesena, sought after and appreciated by the ecclesiastical and civil authorities, loved and reciprocated by the youth and the people. In 1904, Pope Pius X called the Congregation to Rome in the Tiburtino district, a delicate and difficult sector of social and religious apostolate, where it was able to develop on a broader scale and with more abundant fruits its program of moral reclamation. From the capital it spread to the Bufalotta, S. Marinella, Albano, Naples, S. Giuseppe Vesuviano, Foggia, Lucera, Sezze, Segozia, Dipignano, Avezzano, with various works always for the benefit of the youth and the people. As the crowning of its life of apostolate, in 1904 the Congregation also took on a mission in Cyrenaica. In the surroundings of Benghazi it founded primary schools, schools of arts and crafts, an important agricultural school, a clinic much frequented by the Arabs of the oases and the desert, in which, healing the body, so many souls of children and adults were saved; later the Josephine apostolate also extended into Tripolitania, in the capital, at Sidi Mesri, at Ain Zara.
In 1914 the Josephites crossed the ocean and from Brazil went to Argentina, Chile, Ecuador, the United States, carrying out in home missions and also among the natives, in flourishing and manifold works for the youth and the people, the founder's program. The General Curia was transferred in 1918 from Turin to Rome in the Tiburtino district.
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Luigi Casari