In Turin, a fairly large group of former students, mostly from the Polytechnic, boys and girls who continued to meet, as believers, in search of concrete ways to realise the aspirations now mentioned. In the first half of the 1950s, a number of events had marked the group’s path of research: – firstly, the circulation and reading in the group of a few issues of the magazine ‘L’Anneau d’or’ which had come into their possession, in which they spoke of ‘conjugal spirituality’ and of the Ends Movement, then born in France; then the report of the existence of the Ends Movement to a Turin couple (Lillo and Marisa Donat-Cattin) by the Milanese theologian Mons. Carlo Colombo; – finally, direct contacts with people belonging to the Ends, by some of the group’s participants travelling to France for work reasons.
However, it was one event in particular that significantly advanced the group’s approach to the Ends. In 1958, on the initiative of the French Superior of an institute of nuns where the group had sometimes met, taking advantage of the baby-sitting service for children born in the meantime, which those nuns kindly offered. As their guest was a certain Père Ranwez, a Belgian Jesuit who was also a spiritual counsellor at an End, the Superior proposed that the group spend an evening with him to exchange their experiences. The meeting with that priest will be, for the group, decisive for the start of the experience. The meeting with that priest will be, for the group, decisive for the start of the experience.
The acquisition of the information provided by Ramwez had already given rise to two important developments. Firstly, the experimentation of the End method by some members of the initial group, who were more interested in continuing the experience and had therefore formed two smaller groups that were to become the Turin 1 and Turin 2 teams, and then the search for direct contacts with the End Movement in France. This search had in turn given rise, in 1959, to an invitation to a couple from Turin to participate in the annual meeting of couples in charge of teams, which was then held in Paris, as the only one in Europe, and to the subsequent request for inclusion in the Movement by the two Turin groups. This request was formally accepted in the spring of 1960 during a visit to Turin by Abbé Joly, at that time a direct collaborator of Abbé Caffarel.
In the sub-Alpine capital, a group of young married couples, in the late 1950s and early 1960s, after various experiences in Catholic associationism, many from Turin’s Catholic middle class, decided to make contact with their French friends to understand what these Teams were all about. So some couples began their Christian and human adventure in Turin. They are Paolo and Amalia Ricci, Celina and Nino Capetti, Fiorenzo and Annamaria Savio, the parents of the president of District 1 Cristina, then Gina and Beppe Viarengo, a collaborator of Prof. Franco Bolgiani and for years in the Ends secretariat which was in Turin. Then Renato and Ada Ascoli, Lillo, brother of the DC politician Carlo and Marisa Donat-Cattin, who translated the notebooks from French, Matteo and Rein Sarsotti, the Lacchia and Torta couple, Giorgio and Clara Bo, Carla and Joseph Ostino, Silvia and Poppi Simonis, Corrado and Luisa Tresso, parents of councillor Francesco and again Bruno and Maria Luisa Golzio, Mario and Anna Griseri, the Salza, Marin and Pochettino families.
The couples were accompanied by priests open to collaboration with the laity: don Guido Arosio and don Carlo Carlevaris, worker priests, don Matteo Lepori, don Franco Peradotto, don Giuseppe Ghiberti, don Franco Martinacci, don Giovanni Giorgis, father Gian Mario Revelli, don Aldo d’Ottavio, don Luciano Allais, don Antonio Amore, don Tony Revelli, don Ezio Gay, the religious Father Albano Allocco, Jesuits Zanda and Granzino and Father Rizzello, Father Gigi Mulatero, at a later date Father Mauro Rivella, Father Germano Galvagno, Father Ermis Segatti, Father Giorgio Piovano, Father Giovanni Ferretti, Father Paolo Tomatis the spiritual advisor of the Torino 2024 Coordination Team.
