Father Pio Brunone Lanteri took charge of Amicizia Cristiana’s general direction in Italy in 1785. However, he counted on several early collaborators taken from the men Father Nicholas Diessbach had recruited. Two of them were especially active in those early years—Father Giuseppe Sineo della Torre and Father Pietro Rigoletti.
Father Giuseppe Sineo della Torre was born in Turin on December 21, 1762. He belonged to a noble Piedmont family. His brother, Father Giangiulio della Torre, was a close friend of Vincenzo Gioberti1 and spiritual director at the University of Turin. Father Lanteri denounced Gioberti’s heterodox orientation to the Holy See. Unlike his brother, Father Sineo remained faithful to the solid doctrinal formation received from Father Diessbach when preparing for the priesthood. Although young and of slight physical appearance, he had a natural ascendancy over all those who approached him. His great friend, Father Pietro Rigoletti, was also directed by Father Diessbach. Always working together, Sineo and Rigoletti contributed much to the progress of the work and helped Father Lanteri structure it in Italy. They were two of the movement’s mainstays in this early period.
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Father Jacomo de Saint-Georges was another person who played a notable role at this time. When he went to Turin to complete his studies for the priesthood, the Countess of Saint-Georges, his mother, recommended him to Father Lanteri, who became his director. Father Saint-Georges was assigned to the Aa and soon put in charge of the association’s correspondence and rendered relevant services.
Faithful to the method described in previous articles, Father Lanteri was initially more concerned with establishing Aa. His goal was to form zealous priests who would, in turn, dedicate themselves entirely to Amicizia Sacerdotale’s work. That work would give them an appropriate intellectual preparation to guide Amicizia Cristiana in the fight against revolutionary ideas. Father Lanteri had no intention of abandoning the two Amicizie. However, he placed a priority on attending to Aa, the organization that would be the foundation of the others.
It is important to remember that Turin’s Aa was established by Father Murgeray, who belonged to the Aa of Chambéry. Therefore, the Turin Aa was subordinate to that of Chambéry. The association was installed in the local seminary. Its most ardent activists were Jean-Baptiste Aubriot de la Palme, future Bishop of Aosta, and Pierre-Joseph Rey, later Bishop of Pinerole and Annecy. They consistently protected Father Lanteri in all his activities.
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From its foundation in the seventeenth century, priest-members usually directed Aa. However, most members were theology students preparing for the priesthood. Over the years, some Aa members were priests, philosophy students, and even laypeople. Still, these were exceptions. Aa primarily worked with theologians (as candidates to the priesthood majoring in theology were usually called). While Father Lanteri formed Amicizia Sacerdotale for priests, he reserved the Aa exclusively for students. Having a clear notion of the needs of his time, he included students of philosophy. Aware of this orientation, Chambéry’s Aa approved it. The older organization manifested its conviction that its actions should extend to so-called philosophers. Therefore, it prepared to receive them as members. Let us quote an excerpt from a letter by Father Guillet to Father Jacomo de Saint-Georges, which describes the Savoy clergy’s state of mind on the eve of the French Revolution:
“We have been considering extending our membership to philosophers for some time and are delighted to hear you are already working in this field. I believe that you will reap many fruits if you succeed. Experience shows beyond doubt that if there is so little piety and fervor among theologians, it is because they enter theology full of a worldly spirit and dominated by their passions. Evil comes in, particularly in philosophy; at this time, one’s passions are most intense, and, unfortunately, everything favors them, so it is very difficult to preserve seminarians from corruption today. I cannot see without groaning a theology [class] with fifty to sixty students, including some clergymen, in which Aa faces all sorts of difficulties in picking someone suitable for it. Yet, they are all destined for the ecclesiastical state, and almost all will become priests in a few years. Ah, let me groan at all this!”
“The greater the evil, the more ardent we must be to provide remedies. I believe that an Aa in philosophy [class] would do much good by giving appropriate exercises in piety. Let us fervently ask God to deign to turn His eyes to His Church’s needs and lift her from the shame in which the life of ecclesiastics has cast her. This year, with God’s help, we will begin to prepare some topics to attempt the founding next year. We will only do what France’s Aa is doing, as a friend we met some years ago has told us. They understand that if we want to populate the country with good subjects, we must begin by giving them a proper philosophical formation. We place this matter in God’s hands.”
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