Original scientific paper
https://doi.org/10.32728/h2013.08
Istrian Benedictine monk and the first bishop of Rijeka Isidoro Sain (1869-1932)
Marko Medved
orcid.org/0000-0002-2221-9121
; Katolički bogoslovni fakultet Sveučilišta u Zagrebu, Teologija u Rijeci
Abstract
Historiography has completely ignored the persona and work of Istrian Benedictine monk and the first bishop of Rijeka, Isidoro Sain. He was born on 22nd of November 1869 near Novigrad in Istria, and he received his spiritual education thanks to a Benedictine convent in Dajla. When he became a monk, young Michele (Mihovil) chose the name Isidoro. He spent many years in Genova as an educator and a teacher and performed the same services in other Benedictine centres all over Italy, eventually becoming the abbot of a convent in Praglia near Padova. After two years of service, pope Pius XI named him the apostle administrator of Rijeka in 1922. He led the church in Rijeka during very important ten years for the church of the City of St.Vitus because at that time people of Rijeka managed to realize their wish of creating a diocese. After the city became a part of Italy in 1924, Sain began negotiating for creation of the diocese of Rijeka (Fiume). A year later, pope Pius XI founded the multinational diocese for Croats, Italians and Slovenians with a papal bull Supremum pastorale munus on 25th of April 1925. His most important achievements during those 10 years are creating new parishes and building diocese structures (seminaries, chapters, ordinaries) for the new diocese of Rijeka; he became the bishop of that diocese in 1926. The new diocese was created in an environment marked by a forced Italianization, with Italian becoming the sole permissible language of liturgy. Those years were years of hard economic times and poverty in Rijeka and Sain became one of the most popular people among the poor in the city who he was selflessly helping. On the one hand, one can see the rigidity and devotion of his ascetic life, on the other hand, one can see certain oversights in his management, and there is evidence he did not choose his associates carefully.His episcopate in Rijeka left an important mark on church life and the construction of church structures, but it should be interpreted in the context of the relationship of Italian catholic hierarchy and Italian fascism. Isidoro Sain died in Rijeka on 28th of January 1932. After the administration of Carlo Mecchia as the apostle administrator, Antonio Santin became the second bishop of Rijeka in 1933, and after five years of being a bishop, from the late 1930s and four decades after that, he will be in charge of the Trieste-Koper diocese.
Keywords
Isidoro Sain; Benedictine monks; Diocese of Rijeka; fascism
Hrčak ID:
132869
URI
Publication date:
12.12.2013.
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