A week-long workshop at the Dehonian Studies’ Centre provided an opportunity to outline the possibility of a new research project within Dehonian Studies. Against the backdrop of reflections on Dehonian traditions and charismatic legacies, figures emerge who responded to such legacies directly by putting the founding charism into practice. This article seeks to define the status of such a tradition towards the figure of the Founder and his first companions. Given the history of the origins of the Congregation, full of turning points, the list of the socalled first fathers has been endowed with some caveats and divided into several levels to satisfy the idea of the first father: a religious who, during the Founder’s lifetime, persevered in the Congregation until his death and made a significant contribution to the consolidation of the Congregation’s charism. This provides an opportunity to reflect on the history of the institute, as well as on the contemporary concept of biography, which, in a critical approach, attempts to reconcile other methodologies (commemorative, hagiographic, or positivist) that, refer to the essential needs of research, reduce the historiographical narrative. The final section of the article brings together the elements that would allow the construction of a research project while defining its possible objectives.
