OUR GREAT BROTHERS: Aloysius Doneda, John Baptist Foglieni and Aloysius Spinelli

Br John Baptist Foglieni, SJ

Among our many efficient Brothers three stand out very prominently. They are Brother Aloysius Doneda, Brother John Baptist Foglieni and Brother Aloysius Spinelli. What we, Jesuits, owe to them and what Mangalore and Calicut owes to them cannot be measured by human standards. They are a lasting example of what simple men with firm trust in God, with grit and determination of will and with definite plans can do. The Codialbail Press, the St. Joseph's Asylum Workshops, the St. Vincent's Workshops witness their zeal and work.

Brother Aloysius Doneda came to India as a Jesuit Novice on July, 9th 1879 and took his first vows in the Jesuit Novitiate in the Seminary, Jeppu. On his way to India with Fr Gallo, they were shipwrecked and lost everything except the clothes they wore. His deafness which increased with age, was a result of this accident. On his arrival in Mangalore, just for two years, he worked at St Aloysius College with Brother Zamboni and then in 1882 was asked to take charge of the St Joseph's Press which Fr Mutti had just started at the Bishop's House. From 1882 for 42 years, he guided the destinies of the Press from its birth to manhood. After a few years the Press was renamed The Codialbail Press' which name it has retained to this day. The Press became his life's work and we may summarise his work in a sentence: He put all his heart in his work for the glory of God'.

The Codialbail Press began with a single machine and four compositors with Brother Doneda. A small hand press, just big enough to print a foolscap page, with a small consignment of Roman type and sundry other materials, worth about Rs. 600/- in all, arrived, from Paris in 1882, and was located in a small room attached to the newly erected school building in Codialbail........ Good Brother Doneda with a couple or two of raw compositors began drugging at the hand-press, striking off the first copies of the Konkani Catechism, and other odds and ends in the interest of Christ's little ones." This is how the Codialbail Press began and if in the years that followed, it became one of the best presses in India, taking up not only Diocesan work like pastoral letters of the Bishop, circulars, directories and calendars but college and school printing works, Government work and even printing work from and to Italy, Japan and Ceylon, not a little was it due to the assiduous care and hard work of Brother Doneda. News letters to Italy which are extant today still in clear print, were printed and mailed from the Codialbail Press. Its bookbinding section in particular, won a name as the best and orders were received from other parts of India and even from outside India. And Brother Doneda was the silent man behind the curtain who saw to everything, that everything was efficiently turned out.

What did this efficient Press mean to the Brother? It meant solicitous care and an eye to details. It meant the work of a pioneer without its glamour. In fact he was its Manager but not its Director. He had to manage under someone who could give directions and orders not quite to the liking of the Brother or even not in view of the efficiency and advantage of the Press. The Brother had to obey and that obedience in triffles brought its dividends in God's own ways. The Press progressed.

In those days of piety and devotion to work, the Brother had no trouble with the workers by way of strikes etc., though there were always the black sheep, disgruntled workmen, especially from among those who had been helped the most. But the Brother had to patiently train his workers in the different technicalities of their work. It was a taking job and made more taxing due to his slowly increasing deafness. But it must be noted that the workers loved him and he loved them and did not hesitate to put in a word on their behalf when they needed material help. To the natural eye, to the worldly eye, Brother Doneda's work appeared a simple affair on par with the other routine work of a labourer in a workshop. Precisely in this lay its heroic aspect. For a religious who had given up wife and family life with its comforts and consolations of dear and near ones, to a religious who could not earn or possess, to a religious whose every move was regulated by obedience, to stick to a work and to carry it on meticulously without glamour, without a sense of tangible gain, wordly wise fulfilment, demanded something more than mere human grit, more than mere human motivation, and Brother Doneda did it for 42 years. And if the Brother had sought any personal gratification in the success of his work which had grown so well, that gratification had to be sacrificed. When the time came for the Press to be handed over to the Diocesan Clergy, he accepted the decision of the superiors with resignation worthy of a religious'. A silent hero unsung, unhonoured he bowed to obedience and left for Fr Muller's Hospital after a stay of 42 years at the Bishop's House. He was 69 then. For 8 more years he helped at the hospital, nearly a deaf man, lending a helping hand here and there. His stay at the hospital was a help for him too in his old age ailments. Here, away from his country which he had left 54 years ago, away from the familiar surroundings of his life's work, he died quietly on 29th January, 1932.

Just as you enter the gate of St. Joseph's Asylum Workshops your eye falls on two life size statues on the facade of the building they are of Fr Diamanti and Brother Foglieni. The workshops owe their inspiration and existence and development to them, in particular to the sweat and labour of Brother Foglieni. From airy nothings the Brother's patience, determination and zeal to help the poor have given enough habitation and a name to St. Joseph's Asylum Workshops.

Brother John Baptist Foglieni was born in the Diocese of Bergamo on 5th April, 1868. As an active young man after his studies in the local schools, he sought admission and was admitted into the Diocesan Seminary. But God had other plans for him; ill health prevented him from continuing his studies for the Priesthood. He sought admission into the Society of Jesus as a Brother and was accepted. He joined the Novitiate on July 30th, 1881. After his first vows, from 1883 till 1887 we find him in Portore, Mantova and Gorizia, a very useful hand in every work of the Jesuit Houses in those places. Towards the end of 1887, he was assigned to the Mangalore Mission and he arrived in Mangalore on 8th December of the year. After a year's stay at St Aloysius College, he was transferred to the Seminary to assist Fr Diamanti at the Orphanage and Workshops which he had just started. And he remained here at his post for 58 years from 1889 till his death in 1931, with the exception of one year, 1920, when he visited Italy, his native land in Europe.

Ill health was God's means to bring Fr Muller to Mangalore and we have the Hospital, named after him. III health again led Brother Foglieni to the Society of Jesus and to Mangalore and we have a flourishing Industrial Workshop. The workshop is not the brain-child of the Brother but certainly he had to do all the nursing of the child. And this his great work began as the infirmarian of the orphans and inmates of the catechumenate. He loved the sick and had a delicate touch in his treatment of them. His ill health had brought him his vocation and the ill health and misery of others was to open up the path for his great work of love and charity. As an infirmarian he was asked to nurse the leper, scholastic French in his last days when he was a ghastly wound from head to foot. Fr Em. Coelho, S.J. notes: "I found the Brother one day in the task drawing maggots from the leper's legs with a pair of pincers. He had drawn about 150. When I asked him, what enabled him to practice such charity, he answered that it was the thought that God may have linked up the grace of his perseverance in the Society with what he was doing for his patient". Well, we might add that, not only the grace of perseverance but that, the many graces which the Brother received from God for his life's work must have been linked up with his deep love of the sick and the poor. In fact, the origin of the workshop is closely linked up with his work as an infirmarian. A young man, worn out to a shadow by malaria and abandoned by all, sought the help of the Brother. He was a non-catholic. By Brother's assiduous care the man recovered and moved by the tender care bestowed on him by the Brother, he sought for Baptism. He was Baptized and helped to earn a living. By profession the man was a blacksmith. He was given a few tools and two orphan boys to help him to prepare a few common utensils like stone dressers knives, hammers, grass cutters which could fetch a price in the open market. This was the beginning of the foundry which today is a mighty Commercialized affair. This was the starting point, the grace of inspiration for the Brother, how things could be. As with his infirmarian's work, he had also been appointed to help Fr Diamanti in his workshop plans, he saw the path open before him now, to go ahead boldly. The Superiors seeing his ability and humility slowly left the full management to him. He had found his work in his vocation. In 58 years of vigilant care and dogged determination and hard work to help the helpless to find a place in life's struggle, he built up what today is St Joseph's Asylum Workshops.

Brother Doneda who outlived him by a year, when asked for a note to be inserted in Brother Foglieni's life sketch wrote: From the day he was appointed help Fr Diamanti he left no stone unturned to fulfil his office properly. Those were heroic days when everything was in such a desperate confusion as to baulk the grit and fortitude of any enterprising man. His was a pioneering work. Work had to be created rather than made. The humble beginnings with which he started the several departments, the foundry, tannery, statuary, shoe-making, marble-work, car-repairing and the wondrous improvements he achieved in each of them, eloquently witness his work and are a lasting monument to his heroic zeal". The moving spirit, the starting and guiding hand in every department was the unostentatious Brother. For 58 years he spent his time and energy, his heart and mind to build up St Joseph's Workshop. In 1920 he went to Europe and brought with him a few mechanical machines to up-date the work. Slowly and steadily every department grew in extention and perfection. The Government recognized his work and honoured him with the Kaiser-i-hind Medal for his excellent services.

What was the power behind the great amount of work and achievement of Brother Foglieni? Br Foglieni was a man of prayer. The author of his obituary note writes: "The success Brother Foglieni obtained was mainly due to his importunate prayers. He had a remarkable trust in God. His devotion to St Joseph, the Patron of the Seminary and Workshops was childlike. When hard-pressed for money he was wont to have a Mass said in honour of St Joseph. He was a man of character, a matter-of-fact man, a holy religious, and showed wonderful resignation in all the dire misfortunes that befell him.

The strain of constant work with all the care and anxiety it involved and his advancing age undermined his constitution. On the suggestion of Superiors, he went in 1930 to Kotagiri for a change. Here he had a fall which resulted in a fracture of the thigh bone from which he never recovered fully. On his return from Kotagiri a native physician tried to treat him but without much success. His last days were days of acute suffering but borne with patience and resignation to the will of God. Those who came to comfort him went away comforted by his cheerfulness and resignation. On December, 10th, 1931, he who had come to be known as the Father of the Orphans quietly died.

This above material is taken from the book "Restless for Christ - Lives of Select Jesuits who toiled in the Karnataka Province" Series - IV