by Graziella Fons

"My mother, give me a hundred lire, I want to go to America." This song has entered popular folklore as a cry of hope at a time marked by profound misery in many Italian regions. Both the beginning of the industrial revolution and the post-war period of 1945 were marked by great exoduses: from Friuli to Sicily a large movement of people crossed the borders of Italy in search of fortune. Some emigrants stopped in European countries, others with the "hundred lire" crossed the oceans towards the United States, Canada and South America, spreading their families like leopard skin. These brothers of ours of the "hundred lire" with a great nostalgia of the soul have also brought with their regional dialects the culture and traditions of their territories of origin.
The summer period renews the embrace between emigrants and their land of origin. it is a dip in the lake of memory, a meeting with the new born members of the family, but above all a savoring of the scents and climate of one's country of origin. This also happened this year for the second and third generation emigrants from Don Guanella's native valley.
There were eighty-three people from fourteen different states of the USA representing the ancestors who from Campodolcino, Fraciscio and nearby towns, from 1840 to 1900, emigrated to Wisconsin and precisely to Genoa along the Mississippi.
Don Guanella's uncle Tommaso and a certain Monti from Ticino Switzerland were among the first to report the area as a possible settlement for valley dwellers.
In 1854 another aunt of Don Guanella, Maria Orsola, emigrated there, a widow with six children (the oldest 19 years old and the youngest only 8 years old). Don Luigi Guanella spoke and wrote many times about his relatives who emigrated to America and tried to maintain contact with them.
The event of the presence of a large group of descendants of the first emigrants, in fact, allowed them to return to their land of origin coinciding with the upcoming canonization of Don Guanella. On this occasion the participants had the opportunity to honor their "saint" fellow citizen by visiting his birthplace, the places dearest to him as well as going to the villages and mountain pastures from which their ancestors had left. This return to Valle Spluga, to the sources of their families, lasted about twenty days and also strengthened relationships with one of their compatriots who the universal Church will proclaim as a "saint" on October 23rd.
We cannot forget that two souls and two lands live in the emigrant with their characteristics "that of origin and that of reception with the risk of losing one's unitary identity".
In the first generation of emigrants, the sense of belonging to the traditions of the distant land is very alive. The Pious Union of the Transit of St. Joseph can testify to this adhesion to the "hearth" of the little house of Nazareth with the presence of St. Joseph, "he who provides", who defends, who assists and who offers energy to our fragility and weaknesses. Our primary Pious Union of Saint Joseph is present with its members in eighty-seven nations, our magazine arrives monthly as a message of fraternal communion in these countries. A high relationship is maintained with Italian emigrants scattered across Canada, the United States, Switzerland, Germany and England. This monthly meeting of ours with the magazine is a thread that weaves a relationship of faith that knows how to share in the communion of prayer the discomfort and difficulty of distance, but which also knows how to encourage the industriousness and courage of these brothers who with the heritage of a secular religiosity, imprinted in the deepest and most secret of the soul, becomes a shining example of honesty and harmony. Due to the occasion of the canonization of Don Guanella there is a great movement among the descendants of the Guanella family as well as the valley residents of the new Saint to participate in some way in this celebration with the satisfaction of seeing the figure of one of their relatives on the stage of the world Church held up as an example of a fully realized man. Don Guanella has always paid particular attention to the emigrants who emigrated from his valley to the Americas. He himself, in his seventies, wanted to embark and reach the United States to organize help for poor Italian emigrants.