Salesian Society of Saint John Bosco
Religious congregation founded by Don Bosco in Valdocco in 1859 for the education of young people, today present throughout the world with its mother house in Turin.
The Salesian Society of Saint John Bosco (its members are called Salesians) is the male religious congregation founded by Don Giovanni Bosco in Turin, in the district of Valdocco: prepared from 1841 and formally established in 1859, it is dedicated to the Christian education of young people in oratories, schools, boarding schools and vocational institutes.[1] Born in the working-class outskirts of the capital of the Kingdom of Sardinia, it became one of the largest Catholic congregations in the world, and its mother house is still in Valdocco.
From the oratory to the congregation
The starting point was the oratory. On 15 March 1846 Francesco Pinardi offered Don Bosco a shed with a plot of rented land for 320 lire a year; converted into a chapel, it was blessed at Easter and remained in use until 1852.[2] On 12 April 1846 the oratory moved there, and on 3 November of that same year the priest's mother, Margherita Occhiena, arrived at Valdocco.[3] On 19 February 1851 Pinardi sold the house and land for 28,500 lire to Don Bosco, to Giuseppe Cafasso and to other priests; the church of San Francesco di Sales, begun on 20 July 1851, was consecrated on 20 June 1852.[2] Meanwhile, from March 1853, Don Bosco published the Letture cattoliche with the support of the bishop of Ivrea, Luigi Moreno.[4]
Around 1854 some of the young men who had grown up at the oratory bound themselves by a vow to dedicate themselves, with him, to charity towards boys. Between February and April 1858 Don Bosco went to Rome and was encouraged by Pius IX.[4] On 9 December 1859 he laid out to the young men who followed him the plan for a religious society; on 18 December its superior council was elected.[5] That day Don Bosco and eighteen other clergymen and laymen officially founded the Society of St Francis de Sales.[4] Among the first was Michele Rua, a cleric since 3 October 1852, who had taken his vows on 25 March 1855.[5]
Approvals and the Salesian family
On 14 May 1862 the first twenty-two disciples took their public vows; on 23 July 1864 the Holy See granted the decree of praise.[5] In 1869 came the papal approval of the Society, and in 1874 that of the Regulae seu constitutiones,[4] with the decree of 3 April 1874.[5] Meanwhile Valdocco was growing: from March 1864 the Basilica of Maria Ausiliatrice was built, consecrated on 9 June 1868, and workshops for craftsmen sprang up next to the oratory.[3]
Around the congregation Don Bosco built a wider network. In 1872, while Lorenzo Gastaldi held the see of the Archdiocese of Turin, he founded the women's institute of the Daughters of Mary Help of Christians; in 1874 the Union of Salesian Cooperators, laypeople linked to the work; from 1877 the monthly Bollettino Salesiano.[4] The Biblioteca della Gioventù series had begun in 1869, and in 1909 the association of former pupils was founded.[5]
The missions
On 11 November 1875 the first ten Salesian missionaries left Valdocco for Latin America.[3] The first destination was Buenos Aires; in the 1880s Brazil and other countries of the continent followed.[4] The missions pushed on into Patagonia and Tierra del Fuego: by 1936 they covered 1,980,465 square kilometres with 969 missionaries.[5]
Don Bosco's successors
Don Bosco died at Valdocco on 31 January 1888, after living there for about forty years.[2] He was succeeded by Michele Rua, who in twenty-two years of leadership, until his death on 6 April 1910, brought the society to 345 foundations and 3,996 Salesians; under Don Paolo Albera (1910-1921) it reached 478 institutes and 5,194 members; Don Filippo Rinaldi (1922-1931) and Don Pietro Ricaldone followed.[5] In 1929 the rooms where the founder had lived were turned into a place of memory and pilgrimage: this is how the museum came about, whose heart lies in the «camerette» where the saint lived and died.[2] By the mid-1930s the congregation numbered 11,500 Salesians in 724 houses and 46 provinces, with 111 institutes equipped with vocational schools and 14,000 apprentice pupils.[5]
On 1 August 1950, at the mother house in Valdocco, the 102 chapter members elected Don Renato Ziggiotti as Rector Major; he was born in 1888 and entrusted at the age of seven to the Salesians of the Manfredini college in Este. In 1965 it was he who asked for the election of a successor, the first time this had happened in the congregation's history.[6] On his election he said:
«I can say I have been a Salesian since I first came to the use of reason!»
On 29 October 1972 Paul VI beatified Michele Rua, «the first successor of Don Bosco», and summed up his work by saying that he had turned the founder's example into an institution spread across the whole world: «he turned the spring into a stream, into a river».[7]
Valdocco today
The congregation today has its own university, the Pontifical Salesian University of Rome.[1] Turin, however, remains the symbolic centre: at number 32 of via Maria Ausiliatrice, in the heart of Valdocco, is the headquarters of Missioni Don Bosco, an organisation founded in the city in 1991 to support the Salesian missionaries working in 137 countries.[8] In 2015, the bicentenary of the founder's birth, Pope Francis spoke in the Basilica of Maria Ausiliatrice, recalling that his father, who had emigrated to Argentina, had attended the Salesians: «My family is very attached to the Salesians».[9] The current Rector Major is Don Fabio Attard, who signs the opening message of every issue of the Bollettino Salesiano.[10]
Pages linking here
Related articles: Basilica di Maria Ausiliatrice, Chieri, Giovanni Bosco