Collegio di Propaganda Fide

Collegio di Propaganda Fide is presented as part of Don Aurelio’s ecclesiastical education and the starting point of an unrealized missionary vocation. The novel gives no extended account of the institution itself; its significance emerges through the course of Don Aurelio’s life, from his original ambition to his eventual service in the Vicenza Diocese.

Don Aurelio’s Formation

Don Aurelio, a native of Rome, studied at Collegio di Propaganda Fide with the intention of becoming a missionary. That aspiration was curtailed by a long illness and by his superiors’ concern that his health would not withstand missionary work. He therefore had to relinquish the vocation he had pursued through his studies.

From College to Lago di Velo

The College also connects Don Aurelio to the clerical network that shaped his next appointment. A Vicentine priest who had been his fellow student there and admired him undertook to secure his reception into the Vicenza Diocese. Don Aurelio accepted the resulting assignment as curate of Lago di Velo, a place whose poverty was the only thing he knew about his new residence when he arrived. His move from missionary ambition to a modest parish post was framed not as a campaign of his own but as a path he accepted, trusting Providence to dispose of him.

Narrative Significance

The institution’s brief appearance establishes Don Aurelio as a priest formed by an intended missionary calling, while the illness and decision of his superiors mark the limits placed on that calling. His education also has a practical consequence: a former fellow student becomes the intermediary through whom he enters the Vicenza Diocese. The novel thus uses Collegio di Propaganda Fide as a point of origin in Don Aurelio’s biography, not as a setting for institutional action.