Sacra Famiglia e Museo Madre Bonino

Inside the Casa Madre of a religious congregation founded in Savigliano in 1887, a small two-room museum preserves the belongings of Beata Giuseppina Bonino and traces the life of the town's beatified foundress through a multimedia route.

Why it matters

The Sacra Famiglia complex on Via San Pietro is the birthplace of an institution, not just a building. The Sisters of the Sacra Famiglia of Savigliano were founded by Giuseppina Bonino, a Savigliano native born in 1843 who devoted herself to the care of orphans, the sick and the poor. The institute was canonically erected on 8 September 1887, and it grew into a congregation of pontifical right with houses beyond Italy. Bonino died in Savona in 1906; Pope John Paul II proclaimed the heroism of her virtues in 1994 and beatified her in St Peter's Square on 7 May 1995. Since 2013 the congregation's Casa Madre in Savigliano has housed the museum dedicated to her, linking the city to her story.

What to notice

The museum is deliberately intimate: two rooms holding objects that belonged to the Beata and to her family of origin, arranged so that the material remains carry the biography rather than overwhelming it. Alongside the artefacts, a multimedia itinerary walks visitors through the life of Giuseppina Bonino and the history of the congregation she founded, a format that suits the subject, since her achievement was organisational and charitable as much as spiritual. The setting matters too: this is the Casa Madre, the congregation's mother house and its generalate, so the objects are shown in the place where the institute's daily work has continued since the nineteenth century. The congregation's early archive and publications trace the community from the first twelve sisters who made their profession in October 1887.

Context and history

Giuseppina Bonino's path followed a pattern common to nineteenth-century Piedmontese foundresses: after joining a Carmelite third order in 1877 she began working with orphans, attracting other young women to the work, and by 1881 she was elected superior of the community that had formed around her. Cardinal Gaetano Alimonda, archbishop of Turin, canonically erected the new institute under the title of the Sacra Famiglia on 8 September 1887, and on 6 October of that year the first twelve sisters professed their vows. The congregation received its decree of praise in 1975 and later spread to missions in Albania, Brazil and Cameroon, while keeping its headquarters in Savigliano. The beatification process moved through the declaration of heroic virtue on 26 March 1994 to the ceremony of 7 May 1995. The museum opened inside the Casa Madre in 2013; Its installation is attributed to Sister Carla Racca and Sante Altizio.