« Give them bread, education and faith »: Church response to the issues of difficult children in Guadeloupe (1935- 1990)
The Home of Saint-Jean Bosco, founded in 1944, was supervised by the Child welfare Association (APE) which mission was to protect abandoned children, old people but also to relieve the disabled and the sick. The home opened at a core period of change when the old colonies became overseas departments. The mission of the home was to « protect, save, and educate poor children, orphans, those left behind and who were delinquent ». As its mission evolved over the time due to economic and social constraints, it embodied the tension between State prerogatives on juvenile delinquency and the Church charity actions. This paper, which relies on a diachronic approach, purports to analyse, from the diocesan archives, what makes the home of Saint-Jean Bosco unique. The home was at the crossroads of several issues: the relationship between the sacred and the secular in Guadeloupe, the origins and the evolution of child welfare with more stress on the child’s interest, as well as the factors that turned the centre from a home for delinquent juvenile into an institution dedicated to the vocational insertion of minors.