The exhibit, curated in collaboration with the Order of the Somaschi Regular Clerics, tells the story of Saint Girolamo Emiliani. On the night of September 27, 1511 he was freed from imprisonment thanks to the intercession of the Blessed Virgin Mary; thus started a long journey of conversion that brought him to realize works of charity and education to embrace and answer to the needs of the sick, poor, and orphans that he encountered in the territories of Veneto and Lombardy.
The exhibit continues by documenting the educational charism of St. Girolamo which, today, after 500 years, continues to exert his presence within the church and in the world, thanks to his method that, as Benedict XVI writes, is characterized by the idea that “the youth, especially the more disadvantaged, cannot be left alone, but need an essential requisite in order to grow: love.”
The first section of the exhibit tells the life of Girolamo Emiliani, from his youth to the conversion and the works that followed. The second section documents his passionate educational sensibility that pushed him to totally dedicate himself to the needy youth so much so that he was proclaimed by Pius XI “universal patron of orphans and abandoned youth.” The third section is dedicated to the contemporaneity of St. Girolamo Emiliani’s charism, to the works he generated and that for five hundred years have kept alive his loving gaze. Lastly, the exhibit also documents the encounter at the Saint Girolamo Emiliani Institute in Corbetta (Milan) between the Somaschi Fathers and some families close to the experience of Communion and Liberation and the story that followed it.

Organized by father Alberto Monnis, father Secondo Brunelli, father Giuseppe Oddone, Gianni Mereghetti, Alessandro Rondena, Alessandro Grittini.