Blessed Mary of the Angels entrusted Saint Joseph with the foundation of a new Carmel in Moncalieri. In the Saint's "purse" he placed material and spiritual needs, which he promptly provided for. Even today many invocations arrive.

by Don Francesco Marruncheddu

Vicolo Savonarola is one of the streets that climb up to the Royal Castle of Moncalieri and which connects the ancient noble Savoy residence to the city center. A secluded, pedestrian alley.

Its silence is broken only by the bell of the monastery of the Discalced Carmelites, dedicated to Saint Joseph of the Mother of God, who began their life of prayer up here on 16 September 1703. They were founded by a nun, Sister Maria degli Angeli (al century Marianna Fontanella), now blessed, born in 1661 in Turin to one of the most illustrious families and entered the Carmel of Santa Cristina in her city at the age of fifteen. 

Sister Maria degli Angeli, still a young professed, had felt in her heart the desire to found a new Carmel; in fact the convent in Turin was now full and could no longer accommodate new vocations; therefore he decided to do everything he could to make the dream come true, and before even thinking about the place of foundation, "he thought well of wanting to place it under the title of his glorious Father and Patriarch Saint Joseph" (so in the Chronicle of the monastery). The choice of location fell on Moncalieri.

Three nuns were chosen to found the new Carmel and they arrived in Moncalieri with great solemnity, accompanied by a procession of carriages. Waiting for them are religious and civil authorities and an enthusiastic population. Although, curiously, the chronicles say that, once the party was over, that evening the Carmelite nuns went to bed without dinner because, in the whirlwind of preparations, no one had thought of leaving them something to eat.

That first monastery was modest, a large house donated by the widow Sapino, beautiful but insufficient for the life of the nuns, whose number was slowly growing. Thus, with great sacrifices, the Carmelite nuns undertook to purchase the nearby houses and gardens, even including a public road that separated them, thus building the current monastery with the adjoining church. This, dedicated to Saint Joseph, is a small baroque jewel, inaugurated in 1731 and completed around 1738 with frescoes by Milocco. 

The testimonies of the fervor with which the future Blessed zealous devotion to the Saint are very numerous: whoever asked her for prayers to obtain some grace, she urged them to confidently intercede with the glorious Patriarch's intercession. She did the same with Duchess Anne of Orléans, wife of the reigning Duke Vittorio Amedeo II, who suffered greatly from the lack of a male heir. Thus, Vittorio Amedeo di Piedmont was born on 6 May 1699. The chronicler points out that it was the last of the Wednesdays dedicated to the Saint to obtain the longed-for grace.

The life of the Carmel of St. Joseph flows peacefully for a long time, enriching itself with new vocations, but then clashes with the complex history of the Sardinian-Piedmontese Kingdom first and then the Italian one. Being at the gates of the capital, Turin, it was in fact difficult for the great history, which passed just a stone's throw away, not to also touch its walls. Thus in 1802 the monastery was suppressed due to the Napoleonic laws, but some sisters remained there, obtaining permission from the Municipality to open a conservatory for girls, upon regular payment of the rent of their own premises. However, the monastery was purchased, at the time of the Restoration, by a special friend of the community, King Vittorio Emanuele I, who gave it back to the Carmelite nuns on 20 March 1820. 

Another storm was not long in arriving: in 1855 the Rattazzi Law deprived the nuns of their monastery and all their possessions, with the confiscation of all the assets of ecclesiastical bodies. But if the damage came from the House of Savoy, the solution also came from the same House: Princess Maria Clotilde, a good friend of the nuns, whom she had frequented during her stays in the nearby Royal Castle, managed to prevent them from abandoning the monastery, defending it with courage. The nuns therefore remain there, even if almost clandestine. It will be the princess herself who will then definitively resolve the matter, deciding to purchase it and therefore making it no longer forfeitable; In 1895 she then left it in her will to the nuns, who however officially regained full ownership only in 1938.

Since then life has flowed peacefully again in the monastery in vicolo Savonarola 1, where even now the community of Carmelites, made up of 12 sisters, lives the spirituality of Carmel in its days marked by prayer, meditation, silence, work, fraternity. It also welcomes young women who want to experience monastic life.

Even today, the Discalced Carmelite nuns of Moncalieri venerate a beautiful seventeenth-century statue in polychrome terracotta of Saint Joseph from Carmel, by Saint Christina of Turin. Suspended from the foot of Baby Jesus is a small bag of raw cloth, with a note that recalls how the Blessed Mary of the Angels collected from time to time the money needed to pay the workers for the construction of the new Carmel, with the certainty that Saint Giuseppe would provide what she needed. To those who pointed out to her that with the sum she had at her disposal she would never have been able to found a monastery, she replied that she would have thought of her as "his of her" of her Saint Joseph of her. So it was, and even today the nuns place in the "purse of Saint Joseph" the requests for prayers that arrive at their monastery, certain of the Patriarch's intercession.