It was in 1903 , or 120 years ago , that Blessed Sister Giuseppina Nicòli , then forty years old and superior of the Sassari orphanage , arrived in La Maddalena accompanying the thirty-three year old Sister Teresa Fior to inaugurate, together, the Casa San Vincenzo , of which the Fior she became superior for a few years.
The first was from Lombardy, the second from Friuli. In those years, between the late 1800s and early 1900s, the overall population of La Maddalena, as a result of the massive military fortification works, which required skilled and non-skilled manpower, had quadrupled, reaching almost 8,000 inhabitants; and great problems particularly of a social nature (as well as political, urban planning and services) had arisen.
Even the Catholic Church placed its attention on the various problems of a rapidly growing archipelago, so much so that between 1901 and 1926 the Vincentians organized as many as 5 Popular Missions . Some of these were also attended by the Lombard Father Giovanni Battista Manzella (1855-1937), who worked in Sassari, who, in his report to the 1906 Mission, expressed himself harshly on the island: «It is a heterogeneous population, made up by people from various countries of the island and the continent. The government factories force the workers to an illegal and cruel holiday work without distinction from weekdays. The very numerous soldiers maintain the usual part of malpractice ».
From a religious point of view, Father Manzella wrote, «Freemasonry, Waldism, unbelievers and non-practicing, make up nineteen twentieths of the population. The Protestant minister preaches three times a week assisted by a deputy». So this was a picture that required, on the part of the Vincentians, an energetic action of evangelization through a stable and significant presence, which was promoted by Father Manzella himself with the support of the apostolic administrator of Tempio and Ampurias and archbishop of Sassari, Msgr . Emilio Parodi, also a Vincentian, who raised a substantial sum of money for the purchase of a building, in a central position, with land (the latter apparently donated) to build the Casa San Vincenzo (which later became the Istituto San Vincenzo) .
In a short time a workshop for the girls was built and started and two small rooms were built, one to be used as a kindergarten and the other as a school . The charitable and assistance activity towards a population made up mainly of immigrants was immediately intense. Subsequently, the orphanage for girls and the rest home for the elderly were opened, while some nuns were used to teach sewing and embroidery. Languages, painting and music were also taught. The activity of the Casa San Vincenzo was initially hindered by the municipal administrations of the time, which were rather anti-clerical and unwilling to grant religious women an important role in the educational field. However, the turning point came with the arrival of a new superior; in 1909, the thirty-year-old Turinese, Sister Maria Elisa Gotteland , from a well-to-do family, was assigned to La Maddalena. a large center of assistance and charity but which in a powerful educational and cultural machine organized to convert the archipelago to Catholicism . Having strengthened the elementary classes, the nuns also gave lessons to those attending public middle and high schools, particularly to the children of the military, projected towards the academies of the Continent.
In 1919, the Educantato was opened; girls and boys came to La Maddalena from neighboring villages (Santa Teresa, Luogosanto, Arzachena, etc.) to attend the schools then existing in the archipelago. Important personalities came to visit the Institute in those years, starting with Queen Margherita in 1922 and Prince Umberto of Savoy in the early 1930s. Sister Gotteland died in 1940 and wanted to be buried in La Maddalena.
His inheritance was taken up by Sister Maria Superina , from Istria, who directed the Vincentian institution with an authoritative hand, further developing its activities and trying to respond to the needs and demands that new times presented. To date, in 120 years of presence , 13 superiors and over a hundred female religious have alternated at the San Vincenzo Institute. Despite the contraction of vocations that began in the 1970s and a progressive, consequent reduction of activities and various downsizings, the Vincentians, albeit with few religious, continue to work in La Maddalena, in the large structure owned by their congregation, still dealing of education, teaching and charity.