MARCANTONIO DURANDO  CM (1801-1880)

[To be beatified in 2002]

Thomas Davitt CM

[A talk given to the Vincentian seminarists in Philadelphia in October 2001]

Early years: Birth till ordination

Marcantonio Durando was an Italian of the Vincentian province of Lombardy. He had two brothers who were very prominent in the military and political affairs of the time. He became Provincial of the province. He was also involved in the foundation of communities of religious women.

He was born in the town of Mondoví, 50 miles (80 km) due south of Turin, in 1801. In 1773 Pope Clement XIV had suppressed the Jesuits and in 1776 the Vincentians were given the Jesuit house and church in Mondoví. The Durando house was next door to the Vincentians. Marcantonio’s father was a lawyer, and ten children were born into the family, seven boys and three girls. The first child, a girl, lived to be eighty. The second, Marcantonio Maria, died at birth. The third, Marcantonio Serafino Donato died the day after his birth. Then came another girl, who survived. The fifth was a boy, who survived. The sixth was our Marcantonio. Then came Giovanni, a celebrated general, Giacomo, also a general and politician. Number nine was a girl, who survived, and the tenth and last was another boy Giacinto Antonio Maria who died as at the age of eighteen. He apparently had some connection with the Vincentians, though the registers do not list him as having begun his novitiate; perhaps he merely had indicated that he wished to join.

      After the French Revolution the French invaded Piedmont in 1798 and stayed till 1802. Marcantonio’s father at first was against the French revolutionary ideas, but then became enthusiastic for them. His two sons who joined the military shared his liberal ideas. Marcantonio did not share his father’s and brothers’ enthusiasm for these ideas, which to some extent were certainly anti-clerical. He seems to have declared his intention to be a priest around the age of fourteen, and his father did not object, as he made some financial arrangements because of this. Marcantonio did his secondary school studies in the diocesan minor seminary in his home town, though attending as a day pupil and not as a boarder. This was, partly at least, because his health was not too good. On 18 November 1818, six months after his seventeenth birthday, he was received into the Vincentian novitiate in Genoa. There were five or six in the novitiate at that time. As he would have done philosophy as part of his secondary schooling he began theology after his first year in the novitiate. He went to the Vincentian house in Sarzana for his theology; this was about sixty miles down the coast from Genoa. After one year there he took his vows. Up till the early 1950s we took perpetual vows two years after entering the novitiate.

In early 1822, when he was in third year theology, his health began to cause some worry to the seminary staff. It was decided that he should be sent back to the community house in his home town of Mondoví. In those days there was a common medical belief that the air of a person’s native place could restore a person’s weakened state of health. His mother, who was sixteen years younger than her husband, died later that year. On 12 June 1824 Marcantonio was ordained priest in the cathedral of Fossano, about twelve miles from Mondoví. He stayed on in the community house in Mondoví till mid-August, when he was notified that he was being appointed to the mission team in Casale Monferrato, about thirty-five miles east of Turin. On the mission team

He arrived in the mission house in mid-August 1824 and started preparing the sermons which he would need for parish missions. After almost exactly four months he was sent on his first mission on 12 December 1824. This mission, like most of those given from that house at the time, lasted just over three weeks. Twenty-five days seems to have been taken as the normal length of a parish mission, though there are variations of length on record. The team from that house gave five missions during 1825. I thought, at first, that this did not seem a large number for a year, but if we regard each mission as being roughly one month, and allowing for breaks for the team between missions, and the fact that all through the summer months there would be no missions because of farm work in the country areas, perhaps it is understandable. Also, the thinking at that time, not only in Italy, was that in the off-season missioners were supposed to be studying, and revising existing sermons and writing new ones. The house also had ministry to the inhabitants of their part of the town of Casale Monferrato.

In December 1825 the superior of the house died unexpectedly, and Marcantonio was appointed acting superior, eighteen months after his ordination. This would seem to say something about how he was regarded by the community. Six months later, in June, the bursar of the house was appointed superior and Marcantonion took his place as bursar. Early in 1826 his father died.

From April 1826 till the end of 1827 Marcantonio does not figure in the lists of missions given by the team from Casale Monferrato. There were three reasons for this. First, once again his superiors were worried about his health, because missions seemed to tire him out more than other members of the team. Second, he had a lot of extra work as bursar during this period, as the community moved into a new house. Marcantonio had to see to the details of this, including attending to much renovation work which was necessary in the house into which they were moving. Third, after the death of his father he had to take part, with his siblings, in dealing with family affairs. The family expected him to share with them the business sorting out of the legal and financial situation of the family after their father’s death.
Even though he was not giving missions, he was involved in the other ministries of the house, catechising, preaching and giving instructions. The latter may, I think, have been some sort of adult religious education. But he also used the time to evaluate the type of sermons he had been giving on missions, and to re-cast them in a more suitable form. An Italian confrere who published a biography of him in 1970, put it rather well:

He had taken as his model the published literary sermons of great French preachers. During his period off the missions he realised that this was hardly a realistic way of preaching to the rural population of the northern Italy. He took the opportunity of completely revising his sermons, making them more suitable for the actual people who would be hearing them. There was also another practical problem. Not all the population understood Italian; there were French-speaking areas and also parts where a local dialect was the spoken language. He referred to one parish where the people were ignorant of matters of the faith because the parish priest always spoke in Italian.

In 1827 he re-started his missionary work, with two missions that year, five in 1828, seven in 1829 and four in 1830. In August 1829 he was transferred to the provincial house in Turin, from where he continued giving missions. In that year he was elected delegate to the Provincial Assembly, being the youngest confrere at the assembly.

        There is plenty of still extant contemporary written evidence that Durando was the most talked about of the Vincentian missioners. He seems to have had a charism for evoking great emotional response, and again and again there are references to his hearers, lay and clerical, being moved to tears. The Vincentians were regarded as being missioners of the stricter type. They, as a group, had an agreed approach in matters of moral theology. Durando’s professor of moral theology advised his students to study moral theology very well, and apply its principles with a tendency towards Christian strictness in their early ministry, and experience would gradually teach them how to be more understanding. There is mention around this time of the fact that Vincentian seminarists and students sometimes took part in missions. During one mission, when the weather was very cold, three fires in different places were kept going for Fr Durando. This is somewhat of a contrast to the attitude of John Francis Gnidovec who did not take any protective measures against the cold.Superior in Turin

     

   In 1831 Durando gave only three missions, as he had been appointed superior of the provincial house in Turin. This was only seven years after his ordination, another indication of the high regard in which he was held. As well as his ministry in that house itself, he was involved in ministry to diocesan clergy, seminarians and nuns. On the same day that he was appointed superior of the house in Turin the superior general, Dominique Salhorgne, appointed him Director of the Daughters of Charity of the Province of Lombardy.

The story of the Daughters of Charity in Northern Italy is a complex one, which I will try to simplify. In the middle of the 18th century there was a small community of Franciscan Tertiaries in Montanaro, about twenty miles from Turin. They had various charitable works. After a while they came under the influence of the Vincentians from Turin and gradually they took on the name, habit and rule of the Daughters of Charity. In 1788 they were linked with the Daughters of Charity. I will refer to them as the Montanaro community. They had only the one house.
In the early 19th century there was another group in Rivarolo, also about twenty miles from Turin. There were five sisters, with Mother Antonia Verna as superior. They tried to live in the spirit of the Daughters of Charity, and the king approved that title for them in 1828. They worked with the poor and sick, and also in schools. They were under the direction of the Vincentians from Turin. I will refer to them as the Rivarolo community. They also had only one house.

     As both the Montanaro and Rivarolo houses were under Vincentian direction they had something in common. In 1830 Durando became director of the Rivarolo community on the death of the previous man. Vocations were coming, and he saw the need for clarification of the status of the two communities in the eyes of both the Church and the kingdom, and also clarification of the links with the Daughters of Charity in Paris. In 1831-32 some diocesan priests tried to get control, and Durando was prepared to let them, putting the communities under the jurisdiction of the bishops. The sisters asked him not to allow this, and he agreed. He founded a common novitiate in Turin for the two communities, and asked the Superior General to send two experienced French sisters from Paris to take charge. The house in Turin was the property of the Durando family. Vocations continued to come and more French sisters arrived to give the benefit of their experience.

     For the sake of uniformity Durando asked the original sisters from both Montanaro and Rivarolo to make their novitiate in the new house in Turin, under the French sisters. Mother Verna and the Rivarolo sisters were in favour of the spirit of the Daughters of Charity, but still wanted to be a separate group with the right to expand into their own choice of works, confined to the Rivarolo locality. The religious and civil leaders of the area backed them in this. This matter came to a head in 1834 when Mother Verna’s second term as superior came to an end. Durando wanted them to give up helping the sick in their own homes, as not being the work of the Daughters at that time and also being a source of possible scandal. The Rivarolo sisters, and the local clergy and officials objected. Durando put in a French superior with another French sister. The objections continued, so Durando withdrew the French sisters and left the community to its own devices. In 1834 the Vincentians break all links with the Rivarolo community, and the four original sisters stay with Mother Verna. She died in 1838 and the cause for her beatification is in progress.
In 1835 the Montanaro sisters also went independent of the Vincentians, leaving only the sisters who had entered the new novitiate in Turin and the sisters who had come from France. Keep in mind what I said at the start of this section: what I have said is a drastic simplification of a complex period.

   

In Turin he had many contacts in high places, because of the family to which he belonged. But on the other hand, his two brothers were on the wrong political side and had to flee from Italy. In the year of his appointment as superior in Turin a new king succeeded to the throne, Carlo Alberto, and he was favourable to Durando and the Vincentians and helped in various ways, especially in connection with the Daughters of Charity. At first the archbishop was not favourably inclined towards Durando, but gradually changed his attitude and appointed him a diocesan examiner, censor of publications and eventually made him one of his personal advisers.

As superior of the house in Turin one of his ministries was supposed to be conferences and lectures to priests and diocesan seminarians. He did not feel ready for such ministry, because of his relative youth and lack of experience; he was only thirty when appointed superior. He delegated this ministry to other confreres while he preferred to go on missions. However, he soon accepted that as superior it was his personal ministry, and he took it on. He soon attracted attention of the wrong sort, as some of his listeners accused him of being too strict and even Jansenistic. Some of these people used to go to his conference precisely to listen for expressions and ideas which they could denounce. This is probably why the archbishop was not favourable at the start. On the other hand, he attracted attention as being a very understanding and sympathetic confessor, and soon became one of the most sought after confessors in the city. On Fridays when he was hearing confessions the traffic in the street became snarled up with the carriages bringing people to him. In 1832, the second year of his superiorship, he initiated lectures for lay people in the house in Turin.

In 1835 there was a sexennial assembly of the Congregation. I was a bit surprised to see that there were only ten provinces in the Congregation at the time. The Lombardy province held its provincial assembly, and Durando was elected second delegate. As the provincial was eventually unable to go, for health reasons, the first delegate went as his substitute and Durando became first delegate of the province. It was his first visit to Paris.

The superior general, Dominique Salhorgne, asked the assembly to accept his resignation on grounds of age and ill health; he was seventy-nine years old. They accepted his resignation, and Jean-Baptiste Nozo was elected to succeed him as twelfth superior general. As Durando spoke fluent French he was someone who was noticed by Nozo himself, and also by Jean-Baptiste Etienne, who was both secretary general and procurator general, and who would become thirteenth superior general. He was the same age as Durando. During his time in Paris Durando also took the opportunity to meet the mother general of the Daughters of Charity, and Jean-Marie Aladel, the confrere associated with Catherine Labouré and the Miraculous Medal.
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In the year after his return from the assembly, 1836, he re-introduced the Ladies of Charity to Turin.
As well as all his pastoral ministry he had a lot of administrative work as regards the house in Turin. There were problems about where the Vincentians should be in the city, and which house should be the central one and on which house the available money should be spent. The present provincial house, in Via XX Settembre, was the one that gradually got enlarged and renovated by his efforts. All this new work meant that he became less involved in missions.

In 1837, while still continuing as superior of the house, he was appointed provincial of Lombardy by the superior general. This appointment would seem to stem from the impression he made at the general assembly, particularly on the two key figures Nozo and Etienne. His fluency in French would also have been an important element in the choice. He was only thirty-six years old, and would remain in office as provincial for forty-three years. At the time of his appointment there were seven houses in the province.
Provincial superior

The year of his appointment, 1837, was the centenary of the canonization of St Vincent. There were big celebrations, understandably, in Paris. Part of the celebration was the re-emergence of a fair degree of normality after the upheavals of the revolution and the Napoleonic era which followed. Turin had its own celebrations for the centenary, and also with the same overtones of the end of a long troubled period of history. The Congregation of the Mission was not the only group involved in the celebrations. Giuseppe Cottolengo, later canonised, was an admirer and follower of Vincent, though not in the Congregation, and he had instituted many charitable works under the patronage of St Vincent. The archdiocese and even the city municipality were also involved.

One of Durando’s contributions was the decision to have a biography of St Vincent re-printed, in order to give people the opportunity of learning more about the saint, the centenary of whose canonization was being celebrated. He chose the biography written by an Italian Oratorian, Domenico Acami, which had been first published in Rome in 1677. It was an abbreviated version of the biography by Louis Abelly. Durando chose it because it was by an Italian, was short, and, although it had gone through four editions, had been out of print for some time. In the fifth edition Durando included the pastoral letter on the centenary by the archbishop of Paris. He also included a sixteen page chapter on the Daughters of Charity, taken from Collet’s biography of St Vincent, to let the people of Turin know something about the origins of that community, which had been re-introduced into Piedmont not too long previously.

But as well as this broader intention of making Vincent and his works better known generally, his re-publishing of Acami’s book also had a narrower intention, aimed at the confreres of his own province. He felt that the genuine spirit of the Congregation needed to be re-invigorated, and that that would in turn lead to an expansion of the ministry of the province.

His personal experience of life in the province convinced him that the older confreres, who had gone through the political upheavals of the previous years, were unlikely to be enthusiastic for a change to a more disciplined lifestyle. For this reason, Durando decided that the most suitable context in which to start introducing his ideas about the original spirit of the Congregation was the formation programme for the seminarists and students. Some years previously he had done something similar with the Daughters of Charity. He split the formation programme into three, with the seminarists in Genoa, the philosophy students in Mondoví and the theology students in Turin. He also put an end to the practice of the students acting as prefects in colleges.

His main reason for having the theology students in Turin was so that he could keep a personal eye on them. He completely re-organised their study, bringing in new courses in Scripture and Church History. He also introduced what he called Sacred Eloquence, a course which he himself taught. This was probably because of his experience on parish missions. One of his students remembered later that Durando always emphasised the need for clarity of expression. This clarity was needed both in speaking and in writing.
His policy of starting with the young in order to animate the province with the genuine spirit of the Congregation paid off quite rapidly, and by 1840 he was able to report an increase in vocations. He had a waiting list of fifteen, because the superior general had told him not to accept more applicants than the province could absorb and support. He saw a bit beyond this, because he wanted the province to become involved in foreign missions. He admitted that originally that had been his own personal inclination, but since he realised that he could not go on such a mission himself he wanted to do all he could to advance the work of such missions.

By 1842, five years after becoming provincial, he had opened one new house, in Sardinia, and had 106 priests, 35 students and 15 seminarists, 46 brothers and 8 seminarist brothers. Three years later there were 39 students and 20 seminarists.

There had been a similar increase in vocations to the Daughters, who by 1845 numbered 260 in the province, with about 30 in the seminary.

There was a general assembly of the Congregation in 1843, because Jean-Baptiste Nozo, the superior general, had been forced to resign. Jean-Baptiste Etienne, secretary general and procurator general, was elected by a huge majority, on the first count, as his successor. Durando, of course, as provincial of Lombardy was present. It seems clear that he was a great supporter of Etienne ever since the previous assembly in 1835.

One of Etienne’s priorities was to make a personal visitation of all the houses in France. The following year he put into practice a decision of the assembly, that in provinces where the provincial was superior of a house that house should have its canonical visitation made by the superior general. When Etienne had completed his visitations of the French houses he next went to Lombardy to make a visitation of the house in Turin where Durando, the provincial, was superior. In his circular letter of 1 January 1845 to the whole Congregation he expressed his great satisfaction with what he saw in the province of Lombardy. He said that the King of Sardinia had told him personally of the great esteem in which he held the Vincentians, and Etienne says he heard the same from the clergy and people. He also made visitations of the houses in Genoa and Piacenza, and was equally satisfied with what he saw. He did not visit the other houses of the province, but met their superiors and was pleased with what they told him.

The central point in Durando’s programme for renewal in the province was a return to the exact observance of the Common Rules. In this he would have been backed by Etienne. Not every confrere of the province, though, was as enthusiastic as himself about this, and in his first couple of years as provincial he had the unhappy experience of some confreres leaving the Congregation rather than fall in behind his reforming policy. He became provincial in 1837, and in 1838-39 nine confreres left, or roughly 10% of the priests of the province; one of these later returned. During the political upheaval of the Risorgimento, in the years 1848-49 ten left, and in 1850-52 five more. Once again, one returned later. It is interesting to see that Durando’s predecessor as provincial is reported to have said, when he heard that Durando was to succeed him, that there would be a drop in vocations and many confreres would leave. He punned on Durando’s name, as duro in Italian means “hard, severe”. He was correct as regards the departures, but incorrect on the drop in vocations. This prediction may have been more of a comment on some of the confreres of the province than criticism of the new provincial.

The political situation in 1848 was centered on the call for liberty, rather in the spirit of the French Revolution. The archbishop of Turin forbade the clergy to get involved in this movement, but in spite of this prohibition some priests and seminarians wore the tricolour cockade and took part in marches and protest meetings. Some confreres were caught up in the spirit of the times and called for a more democratic form of government in the Congregation, including changes to the rules and style of dress. Two confreres of the province, on their own initiative, presented a request to the Holy See, in which they asked for:

A biographer of Durando mentions that one the two confreres involved left the Congregation and the other went to work in America!

They presented their petition to Rome at the start of June 1848. It seems that Rome immediately contacted Etienne, who issued a severe criticism in a letter addressed to all the Italian confreres on 24 June. This letter seems to have been regarded in Italy as an over-reaction to the affair, and even confreres who did not agree with the petition to Rome disagreed with Etienne’s reaction. There was a further petition to Rome in August, and Rome’s reaction was to refer all the disputed matters to the forthcoming sexennial assembly. In October Durando was called to Paris for discussions about the matter with Etienne.

He wrote back from Paris on 21 October 1848, to the superior of the house in Casale Monferrato, which was the centre of the new ideas. With regard to similar problems in the Daughters of Charity the superior general proposed to establish a province composed entirely of Italian sisters, recalling all non-Italians. Durando was opposed to this, and was able to ensure good relations between Italian and French sisters in Piedmont.

With regard to the confreres, he first points out that the number involved is a very small proportion of the whole Congregation. They claimed to have been persecuted. His reply is that it is not persecution to point out that a person’s conduct and expressions of speech are not as they should be, nor is it persecution to impose a penance in circumstances where the person concerned deserved it. Durando said he did not have any objection to the fact that these men appealed to the Holy See, but rather to the way they did so. This gave rise to much criticism of the Rules of the Congregation. It also gave rise to criticism of superiors, with some superiors being called despots and tyrants, and references to the provincial council as animals. It was the younger confreres who were mostly involved.

He then dealt with the objection that some confreres had been dismissed from the community. He said that where such dismissals had taken place they were in strict conformity with the constitutions and papal bulls, and so could not be termed persecution. During the generalate of Fr Etienne the fact was that the tendency was to be even more lenient in such cases than the opposite. And it was not true that Fr Etienne and his council were against any change. They had, in fact, in many matters adapted the Congregation to the circumstances of the time, but they did so always in accordance with the legal requirements, and through the general assembly, which Durando called “our house of representatives”.
He also dealt with anonymous letters, some of which he says fell into the hands of the superior general in a “peculiar and extraordinary way”. (I’d like to know what that means). He was saddened by the tone of these, as well as by their anonymity. He apparently had seen the letters. He says that he can understand and accept the diversity of opinions expressed, and can go along with some of the demands being made, and is in favour of progress, but he cannot accept the way in which these matters have been aired. He says that was more like what common street corner persons would have done.

At the end of the letter he says that he had tendered his resignation as provincial to the superior general, since all this trouble had occurred in his province during his period of office. His resignation was not accepted.

Finally, a confrere said later that in 1848 Durando in one swoop had dismissed thirty-six students because of their liberal ideas, and said that he would have preferred to have kept the novitiate closed for ten years. This seems to have been merely an anti-Durando story. In fact the novitiate was never closed during his period as provincial, and never during the whole of the nineteenth century were there as many as thirty-six students at the same time.

Durando and the foreign missions

 

  There seems to be some evidence that Durando’s intention in joining the Congregation of the Mission had been because he wished to be sent on the foreign missions. He took his vows in 1820, the year of Francis Clet’s martyrdom, and that event also seems to have made an impression on him in this connection. Apparently he specifically asked, at least twice, to be sent. He referred to this original hope of his being sent to China in letters to confreres who had asked to be sent abroad. Also, it was obviously behind his evident enthusiasm and support for such missions during his time as provincial; if he could not go himself, he was determined to do all he could in the way of sending others. His ideas about the sort of men who should be sent, or not sent, on foreign missions have survived in writing, and it is striking that they are, for the most part, equally valid ideas for today.

He was quite clear in his own mind about the sort of men who should be sent on foreign missions. They had to be physically, spiritually and psychologically suitable for such exceptional work. They were to be prepared in advance for that type of work in every possible way. They had to be men who could stay with their decision and face up to all possible difficulties. It was the best men of the province who were to be sent on missions abroad. At the same time, the needs of the province at home had always to be balanced against the needs abroad, and sometimes the talents and gifts of a man might mean that he be retained at home even though his desire was to go on the missions. That, of course, was what had happened in his own case. He was also quite definite that a man who wanted to go on the foreign missions in order to escape from community life at home, or to go merely from a sense of adventure, should never be permitted to go.

   

In spite of all his sound thinking on the matter, not all the confreres who went abroad in his time made a success of their mission. Experience showed him, for example, that it did not always work out well if a confrere was too young when sent; some were sent even before ordination. Also, it was not possible to predict how a man’s health would react to conditions abroad. One man who was sent abroad before ordination was Giuseppe Sapeto. This was before Durando’s time as provincial. We met him already when talking about Justin De Jacobis. You remember that he left his original mission in Syria and went to Ethiopia without authorization, and this made Jean-Baptiste Etienne, the superior general reluctant to allow another Italian confrere, Justin, go there. Sapeto eventually left the Congregation and the priesthood.

During Durando’s time as provincial he sent Giovanni Stella, in 1847, to Ethiopia, but unfortunately he also left the Congregation and the priesthood.

  

The first group sent abroad by Durando as provincial consisted of four priests and two brothers. They left in October 1840 for America. Two of this group became provincials in America: Antonio Penco, who had to return to Italy .because of the financial ruin of his family, and Giacobbe Rolando, who died in Germantown in 1883, One of the other priests of this first group, Fr Roatta, whose first name I have not discovered, had to return to Italy because of bad health. At least two others of the province left for America during Durando’s time.

He also sent an initial group of two priests and a brother to Brazil, with at least one more going later. He sent three to China, and there is a reference to his having sent two “to the foreign missions” without their destination being mentioned.

Durando and the Society for the Propagation of the Faith

The Society for the Propagation of the Faith was founded in 1822 Lyons, in France, by a young lay woman of twenty-three, Pauline Jaricot, the cause of whose beatification is in progress. Her purpose was to arouse interest among lay people in the Church’s foreign missionary work, and to ask them to contribute financially to the maintenance and expansion of this work. One of the means which she and her council used was the publication of a magazine, The Annals of the Propagation of the Faith. The following year they were interested in spreading their work into nearby northern Italy, and they contacted a Catholic newspaper published the Marquis D’Azeglio. He publicized the new work, and the following year 1824 he was asked by the council in Lyons to organize a branch of the society in his area. He obtained the backing of the king of Sardinia and several bishops. The king wished the branch of the society in his kingdom to be independent of the head office in Lyons, so the marquis divided all money collected into two equal portions, one of which was devoted to the spread of Catholic literature, which was his main work, and the other half sent directly to Rome to the Sacred Congregation for the Propagation of the Faith. The marquis’ main work was organized as a group called Amicizia Cattolica, Catholic Friendship. In the late 1820s there was a spread of secret societies of a political nature, and the king decided, for what seemed prudent reasons, to suppress Amicizia Cattolica in case he would be accused of favouring one such society. As the Society for the Propagation of the Faith depended on the marquis’ main work, it collapsed when the other was suppressed. This was in 1828.

The following year, 1829, Durando came to Turin. He recognised that the remains of the local organization were still there, and people, clergy and laity, were still interested in the work of supporting the foreign missions. In every way