During the ceremony, a video was shown, in which Salesian Francisco Lezama retraced the history of the Observatory. Immediately afterward, the other Salesians present intervened, including Fr. Claudio Muniz, and the current Director of the "Píus IX" School, Gonzalo Merino, who symbolically received the plaque. Father Muniz wished to express his gratitude on behalf of the Salesians of Uruguay and recalled the importance of the Observatory for the country.
Fr. Luigi Lasagna arrived as a missionary in Uruguay with a small group of Salesians in December 1876 and opened the doors of the "Pius IX" School in February 1877. On 7 May 1882, as mentioned, he founded Uruguay's first Meteorological Observatory, with the most modern instruments of the time, brought from Italy and France. In particular, he equipped the Observatory with instruments provided by the scientist Fr. Francisco Denza, a Barnabite priest from Naples.
Fr. Muniz then emphasized the contribution of "a very original device called an anemograph, which measures and records on a paper tape the direction of the wind, its speed and the amount of water that falls with the rain." Many of these instruments are still preserved today in the Pius IX School Museum.
Then, in 1886, Fr. Lasagna brought to Uruguay a young Italian Salesian, the 19-year-old Luigi Morandi, who worked for 12 years at the Observatory and who, after realizing that his vocation was not to be a Salesian priest, left his Formation to dedicate his life to meteorology, "so much so that he is considered the Father of Meteorology in Uruguay," continued Fr. Muniz.
"The Observatory of the Pius IX School functioned as such until 1950," he continued. "Consequently, in its library, there are 70 years of meteorological data from Uruguay, with scrupulous weather observations that were carried out three times a day. These data were printed monthly, along with other meteorological research articles that were sent from all over the world. Thus, meteorological data from all over the world from that time can be found in the Museum. Even the first ozone observation data in Uruguay are kept in the Observatory," Fr. Muniz added.
For years, the Observatory rendered an unparalleled service to the port of Montevideo, as the data it received was crucial in determining whether to close or keep it open. It was also an important source of information for the country's livestock and agricultural areas. Fr. Lasagna also built an astronomical observatory in the School, with the most modern scientific instruments of his time, in the Museum today. Also, from 1886 to 1909, the astronomical time and the official time of the whole of Uruguay were transmitted from there.
As Fr. Muniz goes on to say, Bishop Lasagna was a visionary because his dream was the creation of a Latin American network of meteorological observatories, with which to cross-reference data. In addition to the Pius IX School Observatory, his dream was in fact to create another one in Buenos Aires, another in Carmen de Patagones, in southern Argentina, and another over the Pacific. This was not possible, unfortunately, because he died very young, in 1895, in a train accident in Juiz de Fora, Brazil, just two years after being appointed titular bishop of Oea, Brazil, by Pope Leo XIII.
Fr. Muniz concluded his speech by expressing his gratitude for the recognition and at the same time expressing the availability of the important library for those dedicated to meteorological research in Uruguay and around the world.
