Don Bosco

An extraordinary educator and unforgettable parish priest, Giovanni Bosco was born on 16 August 1815 into a very poor Don Bosco peasant family in Becchi Castelnuovo d'Asti (today renamed Castelnuovo Don Bosco). Orphaned of a father at just two years old, he matured his priestly vocation right away. In 1841, as a young priest, he arrived in Turin and began to explore the city to get an idea of ​​the moral conditions of young people. He is shocked by it. Kids roaming the streets, unemployed, disbanded and depressed, ready for anything. He is also deeply impressed by seeing how many of those boys immediately take the road to their homeland prisons. He understands that he cannot remain indifferent to all of this and decides to act to try to heal the difficult situation as he can. He therefore helps the boys to look for work, does his utmost to obtain better conditions for those who are already employed and teaches the smartest. Thus the first oratory was born in the Turin suburbs. In April 1846 he opened an oratory in Valdocco in the "Pinardi house" around which, over time, the grandiose complex of the Salesian mother-house would be built. The problem of welcoming homeless children full-time, not for a few hours, becomes fundamental, but a financial problem arises. Don Bosco becomes the first person promoter of his initiative and starts looking for funds. The first benefactress is the mother Margherita who sells everything she owns to feed the boys. Among the young people who have Don Bosco as father and teacher, someone asks him to "become like him". Thus was born, with the cooperation of Don Rua and Don Cagliero, the "Society of St. Francis de Sales" which will give life to the homonymous order of Salesians. The Salesians not only give young people bread and a house, but they provide them with professional and religious education, the possibility of entering social life and good employment contracts. Over time, Don Bosco became a figure of national importance. A man of extraordinary intelligence, so much so that he was often consulted by Pope Pius IX, he was endowed with almost superhuman "powers" and perhaps, for those who believe, of a divine nature (for example, he faithfully repeated entire pages of books after having read them only once). , Don Giovanni Bosco always remained an extraordinarily humble and simple person. In 1872, tirelessly, he founded the female congregation of the daughters of Mary Help of Christians, known as the Salesian Sisters. A few years later, it was January 31, 1888 when he died in Turin, surrounded by the condolences of all who had known him, leaving behind a luminous trail of concrete works and achievements. Don Bosco was declared venerable in 1907, Blessed in 1929 and Saint on Easter day, April 1, 1934. On January 31, 1958 Pius XII, on the proposal of the Minister of Labor in Italy, declared him "patron saint of Italian apprentices".