| Mario Borrelli | |||||||||||
| Birth Date: | 1922 9, df=yes | ||||||||||
| Birth Place: | Naples, Italy | ||||||||||
| Death Place: | Oxford, UK | ||||||||||
| Known For: | Children of the Sun a Morris West's book; Il bacio del sole - Don Vesuvio a Siro Marcellini's movie; La Casa dello Scugnizzo (The House of Urchins) - Founder; CCM (Materdei Community Centre) - Founder; IPRI - Italian Peace Research Institute - Founder; | ||||||||||
| Awards: | Stella della bontà (1963) Honorary Member of the Deutscher Kinderschutzbund | ||||||||||
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Mario Borrelli (Naples, 19 September 1922 – Oxford, 13 February 2007) was a Neapolitan priest, sociologist and educationist.
In the 1950s he established a home for the street children of Naples which later evolved into an international network for social support, called Casa dello scugnizzo (House of the Urchins). Subsequently, following his laicization, he maintained his international reputation for his civil commitment and his studies on peace research and education.
«The insecure, tormented, down-trodden people, in whom we are submerged, are no different from all the others spread over the rest of the world, even if their eyes, skins, creeds are not the same as ours. Our common destiny is to be the guts of the world, digesting the myths that have sustained empires and manufacturing the vital lymph to sustain the world of tomorrow. Hard work though it may be, we are beginning to digest today's society and church; in time we shall make one another better.Although my white hair and the weight of years make me feel I'll never see the promised land, they have not deprived me of my serenity, enthusiasm or joy in my labours.The urgent thing now is not to get split up, but to close the ranks in support of all who, loyally identifying themselves with the most defenceless, are making their presence felt in the social fabric of our city. They, and all you others scattered everywhere, will be my sweetest consolation when I depart this life.»Mario Borrelli, The continuing story from Morris West, Children of the sun, Fontana Books Ltd, 1983.
Born into a working-class family, Mario Borrelli had to leave school at the age of nine to support his family. For three years he worked as a metal gilder and as a lad in a barber shop. His mother and father were artisan goldsmiths in Naples with five children. He returned to education aged 12 when he was accepted at the Apostolic School, with support of Father Nobilione, a priest who attended the barber shop where he used to work, who paed the school fees for the first year.
In 1946, Mario was consecrated as a priest . He founded the first section of the “Gioventù Operaia” (Young Labourers) and promoted “ONARMO” Opera Nazionale per l'Assistenza Religiosa e Morale degli Operai (National Labour for the Religious and Moral Assistance of Workers), becoming the factory chaplain of several companies.
During these years, he reaches the most remote suburbs of the city with his “flying church”, a second-hand Austin car he had acquired when the Allies departed from Naples. He converted the boot of the car into an altar for Mass and a puppet theatre to teach catechism to the children. In 1949, he was appointed to teach religion at the Jacopo Sannazaro High School of Naples. With his seminary companion, Father Ciccio (Francesco) Spada, he decides to carry out an enterprise among the street children, commonly called in Naples “scugnizzi” (street urchins).
«...how does the street urchin live? The essence of life is the gang. Six, seven, eight and in some cases up to twenty youngsters organized in a gang with a leader. A leader who has been able to impose on its own in perfect style with the wild. The rules of the street can be considered a subchapter of the rules of the wild.»Mario Borrelli, Marciapiedi, Edizioni La Meridiana, Molfetta, 1995.
The “street urchins” in Naples at the end of World War II were abandoned children because of war or whose fathers had returned to the US or the UK. They had a precarious survival with no homes, regular source of food, no education and no adult figures to provide care and support. The schunizzi were generally reviled because of their thieving and disreputable habits. Father Borrelli realised that the apparent delinquency was driven out of desperate need. He obtained permission by this superiors to dress like a street urchin and, at night, mingled with them, sharing their life and misadventures in the street for four months. In the meantime, Father Ciccio Spada and the other priests of the Comunità Piccola Opera di Materdei organized a provisional dormitory in the small deconsecrated church of San Gennariello, with the hope that Father Mario can convince the street urchins to find shelter there, at least for a night. During one of these nights as a street urchin, Father Mario revealed his true identity to the gang and succeeded in bringing the street urchins to the dormitory of San Gennariello. In a few months, hundreds of youngsters are housed in the structure that will soon to become the Casa dello Scugnizzo (The House of the Urchins), a community more than an orphanage, where nobody is forced to stay unwillingly and where they all participate support community's expenses working as junk dealers.
The Casa dello scugnizzo offered hospitality, boarding, education and moral support to the young and homeless, taking the place of the family. Within a few months with the help of public charities, in a few the boys resumed their schooling and professional training.
«...Mario is an uncommon priest, who becomes a street urchin “like them” by taking off his talar, when the Little Brothers of Charles de Foucauld and their experience of incarnation is still in the future. And Mario is a peculiar priest, who lives “with them” to accompany them towards freedom, when the theology of liberation is yet to be practiced. And all this when the churches of the world, catholic and protestant, at their best operate “for them”. »Giuliana Martirani, foreword of Marciapiedi, Edizioni La Meridiana, Molfetta, 1995.
Between 1951 and 1969, Casa dello scugnizzo was not only the physical location providing assistance and support to the street urchins but more importantly it was a network of committees and voluntary groups, distributed throughout Europe and The United States and the fund-raising carried out by the community of Italian, English, American, Canadian, Australian, French, German, Belgian, and Dutch voluntary groups. This way of working enhanced Father Borrelli's reputation and his story was featured in the American magazine Reader's Digest, translated in more than 12 languages, spreads his story around the world. In 1957, Children of the Sun, the biographic novel of Father Borrelli's undertakings written by Morris West, increased his popularity in the Anglophile. In 1958, the film Il bacio del sole (aka Il Bacio del Sole-Don Vesuvio), took inspiration from Mario's venture among the street urchins, and was released at the cinema and distributed throughout Europe. The English broadcasting ITV Television Playhouse produced a biographical television series entitled “Children of the sun”.
In the late 1950s a number of children from Casa dello scugnizzo were enabled to spend some time with host families in Germany and the UK to broaden their horizons. A small number of these children returned to their host families in the following years spending several months with them. This initiative drew the attention of the BBC to the work of Father Borelli and he was the subject of a half-hour television programme in the "This is your Life" series broadcast in 1961. During the 1960s, Father Mario comes to the conclusion that the underlying problems, the social causes of abandonment, maladaptation and social exclusion remain yet unresolved. He decides to live in the Neapolitan slums, together with the Little Sisters of Charles de Foucauld, at the core of a network of voluntary groups of Christian origin that look at the Second Vatican Council as a spiritual and civil source and inspiration.
«10 December 1962.If somebody asks me why I am here in the slums, I must honestly reply I don't really know.I could reply: “Because I love you”. If someone from outside addresses me the same question, what do you think I should reply? “Because I love them”. Even this sounds like a sentence that has become rusty by centuries of abandonment. We have become Pharisees and always prefer considering the poor as the sole responsibles of their misery.»Mario Borrelli, Un prete nelle baracche, La Locusta, Vicenza, 1967.
Following a short course in sociology at the TUFT University, he enrolled at the London School of Economics and was awarded a Master in Social Administration in the academic year 1969-'70. He also made the decision to leave priesthood as his personal, moral and political, views are incompatible with those of the Neapolitan Christian church. The conservative position of the local Christian church appeared to him to be in contrast with the Christian mandate. The return to the laity state seemed to be a natural step for him, rather than an afterthought. He remained a member of the Congregation of San Filippo Neri and subsequently married.
«...I have never understood in what way the Kingdom of God could be incarnated in public life as a clan of groups of human interest that would use God as flag and tablecloth for their daily meal. In what way an elected boss, through his patronal-Mafia network, could bring God to the Neapolitans and make them more honest and good examples of Christianity.When I realized that this Church felt the message too metaphorically and remained distant and absent from the poor, I felt cheated in my vocation. I felt as a prisoner, a wheel of a mechanism that tended to save and perpetuate itself instead of saving and helping others.»Mario Borrelli, Tanquam Peripsema, Naples, 1970.
The next step is to reflect the activities of the House of the Urchins in a wider and more communal dimension, "opening" the institute to the outside world by eliminating the boarding and lodging facilities, and by constituting a multi-purpose social structure, which provides different services in response to practical and immediate needs, but at the same time, which functions as “ignition” and stimulus for a community-based participation. Twenty years of historical research leave the pace to social studies, disseminated in international conferences and shared among the collaborators. For ten years, the Materdei Community Centre focuses its activities on the defence of women and children rights, schooling and health, especially during the outbreaks of cholera and “male oscuro” (obscure illness), an infantile disease affecting the respiratory system and particularly common among the children of Naples at the time whose name was derived by its inexplicable nature and difficult diagnosis and treatment. The Community Centre also provides direct social assistance, promotes initiatives in favour of the local community and coordinates the voluntary groups of Naples.
«Until everyone continues to rush, and wants to be first, to gain more at any expense, even by trodding on others in every sense it will be difficult to entrench peace, which consists essentially in the perfect balance between power and resources. What is necessary instead is a work of social reform where the cooperation of others is essential. In the end, humanity is like a wall of bricks: every row needs the other rows to avoid collapsing. Courage is not heroism: it is a moral duty, a social responsibility.»Mario Borrelli, from the interview released to Donatella Trotta, E nel dopoguerra spuntò Don Vesuvio, Il Mattino, 1985.
In 1977, Mario Borrelli, Tonino Drago and Giuliana Martirani founded Italian Peace Research Institute (IPRI), chaired by the same Borrelli until 1988. The institute is affiliated to IPRA, the International Peace Research Association, founded in 1964 by Johan Galtung and which counts with 26 researchers and 250 correspondents distributed in 60 Italian cities.The small institute has the aim to promote initiatives focused on peace research that involve voluntary associations and non-violent peace-inspired movements, a network of people operating in universities and in basic movements for peace. IPRI follows the same path of its international sister institution by promoting research in the field of communal non-violent defence, peace education and non-violent economy and also publishes a bulletin, the IPRI Newsletter. This small institute contributes to some of the major works on peace research published internationally, ranging from economic development to the international division of labour, from the social services for children to peace research and education. Mario Borrelli is also a member of the P.E.C., Peace Education Commission, within the IPRA. Various essays, but especially the experimentation carried out at the Materdei Community Centre, remain as testimony of his experience as a researcher for peace education.
«Naples is a large swamp in which it is difficult to swim. People who really want to work hard, by sowing seeds on a daily basis, become enemies of the city by fighting against the conspiracy of the precarious, or institutionalization of the provisional, and of disgrace on which this city seems to live on. And which has increasingly deteriorated over the last five or six years or so. The earthquake has been devastating: it has broken the harmony, although only apparent, and has given an enormous power to the emerging social class of “organized crime”. The dominant impression is thus that of a “perpetual begging at all levels that ensures survival”. .»Mario Borrelli, from the interview released to Donatella Trotta, E nel dopoguerra spuntò Don Vesuvio, Il Mattino, 1985.
See also: Mario Borrelli bibliography. The list below refers to the most significant works written by Mario Borrelli during the entire length of his activity.