Alexandre Planas Sauri, born in Mataró (Barcelona) on 31 December 1878, was a lay collaborator of the Salesians until his glorious death as a martyr in Garraf (Barcelona) on 19 November 1936. His beatification took place together with other Salesians and members of the Salesian Family on 11 March 2001, by Pope Saint John Paul II.

            The list of Spanish martyrs beatified by Pope John Paul II on 11 March 2001 includes layman Alexandre PLANAS SAURÌ. His name is one of the Salesian martyrs of the Tarraconense Province, a subgroup of Barcelona. The testimonies about his life also describe him as “of the family” or “cooperator”, but everyone describes him as “a genuine Salesian”. The village of Sant Vicenç dels Horts, where he lived for 35 years, knew him by the nickname “El Sord’” “El Sord dels Frares” (The Deaf man of the friars). And this is the expression that appears on the beautiful plaque in the parish church, placed on at the back, on the exact spot where Alexandre stood when he went to pray.
            His life was cut short on the night of 18 November 1936, along with a Salesian Brother, Eliseo García, who stayed with him so as not to leave him alone, as Alexandre did not want to leave the village and seek a safer place. Within hours both were arrested, condemned by the anarchist committee in the municipality, and taken to the banks of the Garraf, on the Mediterranean, where they were shot. Their bodies were not recovered. Alexandre was 58 years old.
            This is a note that could have made it onto the events page of any newspaper and fallen into utter oblivion. But it did not. The Church proclaimed them both blessed. For the Salesian Family they were and always will be “signs of faith and reconciliation”. Reference will be made in these pages to Mr Alexandre. Who was this man whom people nicknamed “el Sord dels frares”?

The circumstances of his life
            Alexandre Planas Saurì was born in Mataró (province of Barcelona) in 1878, six years before the train that took Don Bosco to Barcelona (to visit and meet with the Salesians and the young people at the Sarriá house), stopped at the station in this city to pick up Doña Dorotea de Chopitea and those from Martí Codolar who wanted to accompany him on the last leg of the journey to Barcelona.
            Very little is known of his childhood and adolescence. He was baptised in the city’s most popular parish, St Joseph and St John. He was, without a doubt, a regular attender at Sunday celebrations, activities and parish celebrations. Judging by the trajectory of his later life, he was a young man who was able to develop a solid spiritual life.
            Alexandre had a significant physical impairment: he was totally deaf and had an ungainly body (short in stature, and curvature of the spine). The circumstance that brought him to Sant Vicenç dels Horts, a town about 50 km from his home town, is unknown. The truth is that in 1900 he was among the Salesians in the small town of Sant Vicenç as an employee in the daily activities of the Salesian house: gardening, cleaning, farming, running errands… A clerver and hard working young man. And, above all, “good and very pious”.
            The house in Sant Vicenç dels Horts was bought by Fr Philip Rinaldi, former Provincial of Spain, in 1895, to house the novitiate and the philosophy studies that were to be carried out later. It was the first Salesian formation centre in Spain. Alexandre arrived there in 1900 as an employee, immediately earning the respect of everyone. He felt very comfortable, fully integrated in the spirit and mission of the house.
            At the end of the 1902-1903 school year, the house underwent a major change of direction. The Rector Major, Fr Michael Rua, had created the three provinces of Spain. Madrid and Seville Provinces decided to organise formation in their respective provinces. Barcelona also transferred the novitiate and philosophy to Girona. The house in Sant Vicenç dels Horts remained practically empty within a few months, inhabited only by Mr Alexandre.
            From that year until 1931 (28 years!), he became the guardian of the house. Not only of the property, but above all of the Salesian traditions that had become strongly rooted in the population in just a few years. His was a benevolent presence and work, living like an anchorite but in no way foreign to the friends of the house who protected him, for the sick of the town he visited, life in his parish, the parishioners he edified with the example of his piety, and for the children at parish catechesis and the festive oratory he animated together with a young man from the town, Joan Juncadella, with whom he formed a strong friendship. Distant yet close at the same time, with no small influence on people. A singular character. The reference person for Salesian spirit in the village. “El sord dels frares“.

The man

            Alexandre, a handicapped and deaf person who understood others thanks to his penetrating gaze, of the movement of their lips, always answered lucidly, even if he spoke softly. A man with a good and bright heart: “A treasure in an ugly earthenware jar, but we, the children, were able to perceive his human dignity perfectly.”
            He dressed as a poor person, always with his bag slung over his shoulder, sometimes accompanied by a dog. The Salesians let him stay at the house. He could live on what the garden produced and the help he received from a few people. His poverty was exemplary, more than evangelical. And if he had stoo much, he gave it to the poor. In the midst of this kind of life, he carried out the task of caretaker of the house with absolute fidelity.
            As well as the faithful and responsible man, was the good, humble, self-sacrificing man of an invincible, though firm, warmth. “He would not allow anyone to be spoken ill of.” Then there was the gentleness of his heart. “The comforter of all families.” A man of transparent heart, and upright intention. A man who made himself loved and respected. The people were with him.

The artist
            Alexandre also had the soul of an artist, an artist and a mystic. Isolated from outside noise he lived absorbed in constant mystical contemplation. And he was able to capture the innermost feelings of his religious experience in material things, which almost always revolved around the passion of Jesus Christ.
            In the courtyard at the house he created three clearly visible monuments: Christ nailed to the cross, being laid in Mary’s hands and the holy sepulchre. Among the three, the cross presided over the courtyard. Passengers on the train that ran past the farm could see it perfectly. On the other hand, he set up a small workshop in one of the outbuildings of the house where he carried out the orders he received or small images with which he satisfied the tastes of popular piety and distributed them freely among his neighbours.

The believer
            But what dominated his personality was his Christian faith. He professed it in the depths of his being and manifested it with total clarity, sometimes even ostentatiously, by professing it in public. “A true saint” a “man of God” people said. “When we arrived at the chapel in the morning or in the afternoon we would always unfailingly find Alexandre praying, on his knees, doing his pious practices.” “His piety was very deep.” A man totally open to the voice of the Spirit, with the sensitivity that saints possess. The most admirable thing about this man was his thirst and hunger for God, “seeking ever more spirituality.”
            Alexandre’s faith was first of all open to the mystery of God, before whose greatness he would fall on his knees in profound adoration: “Bowed down by his body, his eyes lowered, full of interior life… placed at one side of the church, his head bowed, kneeling, absorbed in the mystery of God, fully immersed in meditation on holy pleasure, he would give vent to his affections and emotions…”
            “He would spend hours before the tabernacle, kneeling, with his body bent almost horizontally to the ground, after communion.” From contemplation of God and his saving greatness, Alexandre drew a great trust in Divine Providence, but also a radical aversion to blasphemy against the glory of God and his holy name. He could not tolerate blasphemy. “If he sensed a blasphemy he would either become tense as he looked intensely at the person who had uttered it, or he would whisper with compassion, so that the person could hear: ‘Our Lady weeps, Our Lord weeps.’”
            His faith was expressed in the traditional devotions of the Eucharist, as we have seen, and the rosary. But where his religious impulse found the channel best suited to his needs was undoubtedly in meditation on the passion of Christ. “I remember the impression we had of this deaf man on hearing him speak of the Passion of Christ.”
            He bore the mystery of the cross in his flesh and in his soul. In its honour he had erected the monuments of the cross, the deposition and the burial of Christ. All accounts also mention the iron crucifix he wore hanging from his chest, and whose chain was embedded in his skin. And he always slept with a large crucifix beside him. He did not want to take off the crucifix even during the months of religious persecution that culminated in his martyrdom. “Am I doing anything wrong?” he would say. “And if they kill me, so much the better, then I already have heaven open.”
            Every day he would make the Stations of the Cross: “When he went up to the study room, Mr Planas would enter the chapel, and when we came down after an hour, he was finishing the Stations of the Cross, which he did totally bent over, until his head touched the ground.”
            Founded on this experience of the cross to which was added his profound devotion to the Sacred Heart, the Deaf man’s spirituality was projected towards asceticism and solidarity. He lived as a penitent, in evangelical poverty and a spirit of mortification. He slept on planks without a mattress or pillow, having beside him a skull that reminded him of death and “some instruments of penance”. He did not learn this from the Salesians. He had learnt it previously and explained it by recalling the spirituality of Jesuit St Alphonse Rodríguez, whose manual he used to read in the novitiate house and which he sometimes meditated on during those years.
            But his love for the cross also drove him to solidarity. His austerity was impressive. He dressed like the poor and ate frugally. He gave all he could give: not money, because he had none, but always his fraternal help: “When there was something to be done for someone, he would leave everything and go where it was needed.” Those who benefited most were the children in catechesis and the sick. “He never missed the bedside of a seriously ill person: he would watch over him while the family rested. And if there was no one in the family who could prepare the deceased, he was ready for this service. Favoured were the poor, whom, if he could, he helped with the alms he collected or with the fruit of his labour.”

(continued)

don Joan Lluís Playà, sdb

I knew a man who knew the railway timetable by heart, because the only thing that gave him joy was the railways, and he spent all his time at the station, watching how the trains arrived and how they departed. He gazed in wonder at the carriages, the strength of the locomotives, the size of the wheels, he watched in amazement as the conductors jumped into the carriages, and the stationmaster.
He knew every train, he knew where it came from, where it was going, when it would arrive at a certain place and which trains departed from that place and when they would arrive.
He knew the train numbers, he knew what day they ran, whether they had a dining car, whether they waited for connections or not. He knew which trains have mail cars and how much a ticket costs to Frauenfeld, Olten, Niederbipp or somewhere else.
He didn’t go to the bar, he didn’t go to the cinema, he didn’t go for a walk, he didn’t have a bicycle, a radio or a television set, he didn’t read newspapers or books, and if he got letters, he wouldn’t read them either. He lacked the time to do these things because he spent his days at the station, and only when the railway timetable changed, in May and October, would he not be seen for a few weeks.
So he would sit at home at his table and learn everything by heart, read the new timetable from the first page to the last, pay attention to the changes and was happy when there were none. It also happened that someone asked him for the departure time of a train. Then his face shone and he wanted to know exactly what the destination of the journey was, and whoever had asked him for the information certainly missed their train because he would not let them go. He did not content himself with citing the time, he also cited the number of the train, the number of carriages, the possible connections, all the departure times; he explained that one could go to Paris on that train, where one had to get off and what time one would arrive, and he did not understand that people were not interested in all that. However, if someone left him standing there and left before he had listed all his knowledge, he would get angry, insult them and shout at them:
“You have no idea about railways!”
He personally never got on a train.
That would have made no sense, he said, because he already knew beforehand what time the train was arriving (Peter Bichsel).

Many people (distinguished scholars among them many) know everything about the Bible, even the exegesis of the smallest and most hidden verses, even the meaning of the most difficult words, and even what the sacred writer really meant, even if it seems otherwise.
But they do not turn anything written in the Bible into their personal lives.

(continuation from previous article)

6. All is well at home

Dear young people,
“I think that, in the world, there are no souls who love more cordially, more tenderly and, to put it mildly, more lovingly than I do, because it has pleased God to make my heart this way. It is said in my family that the first sentence that appeared on my lips as a child was: ‘My mother and God love me so much.’
From an early age I was among people. My father had decided that I would be educated not in our castle, but in a more regular school, comparing myself with other classmates and teachers, in short, moving away from the sort of  ‘love bubble’that had been created at the castle.
Back from my studies in Paris and Padua, I was well convinced of my choice to become a priest, but my father was not quite of that opinion: he had, unbeknownst to me, prepared a complete library concerning Law, a position as Senator and a noble fiancée. It was not easy to bend him towards another path. I calmly presented my intentions to father: “Father, I will serve you until my last breath of life, I promise all service to my brothers. You speak to me of reflection, Father. I can tell you that I have had the idea of the priesthood since I was a child.” Father, although he was “of a very steady spirit”, wept. Mother intervened gently. There was silence. The new reality, under the silent word of God, had germinated. My father said: “My son, do in God and for God what He inspires you. For His sake, I give you my blessing.” Then he could take no more: abruptly he closed himself in his study.
At the end of my father’s life, I was given the grace to discern in summary all the love that made him so dear to me: in his candour, his ability to take on important commitments, his taking on the responsibility of guiding me to the end, the constant trust he showed in me, I always discerned the goodness of a noble man, also used to a rough life but with a big heart. Moreover, with the passing of time, his lively temperament softened, he even learnt to allow himself to be contradicted: my mother’s good long-term influence was decisive.
Dad and Mum really showed me two different, but complementary, faces of God’s own grace and goodness.
Perhaps you too, like me, have wondered how to live through the fatigue of experiencing that the vocation you are discovering is different from what others would expect of you. I have proposed, as much to the simplest men of my land as to the king and queen of France, a very simple but highly demanding way: on the one hand, “let nothing trouble you” and “ask for nothing, refuse nothing”; on the other hand, that existence, with the choices it brings, finds meaning in being faced, even with fatigue, exclusively to live “as it pleases God”. Only from here is born the “perfect joy” which probably unites all true saints, men and women of God of yesterday and today.

Office for Vocational Animation

(continued)

In a circular letter Don Bosco wrote in July 1885: “The good book even enters homes where the priest cannot enter… Sometimes it remains covered in dust on a table or in a library. No one thinks of it. But the hour of loneliness, or sadness, or pain, or boredom, or the need for recreation, or anxiety about the future comes, and this faithful friend dusts himself off, opens his pages and…”

“Without books there is no reading and without reading there is no knowledge; without knowledge there is no freedom”, I read on the internet, not sure whether written by some nostalgic or a book lover or by a good connoisseur of Cicero.
Don Bosco for his part, as soon as he finished his studies, immediately became a writer and some of his books became genuine best sellers with dozens and dozens of editions and reprints. Once the Congregation was founded, he invited his young collaborators to do the same, using his own print shop set up in the same house in Valdocco. At a time when three quarters of Italians were illiterate, he wrote in the above-mentioned circular: “A book in a family, if not read by the one for whom it is intended or given, is read by the son or daughter, friend or neighbour. A book in a town sometimes passes into the hands of a hundred people. God alone knows the good that a book produces in a town, in a mobile library, in a workers’ society, in a hospital, donated as a pledge of friendship.” And he added: “In less than thirty years, the number of pamphlets or volumes we have distributed among the people adds up to some twenty million. While some books may have remained neglected, others will each have had a hundred readers, and thus the number of those to whom our books have done some good can be believed with certainty to be far greater than the number of volumes published.”
With a bit of imagination, we could say that in some way Don Bosco’s publishing network heralded both today’s online book, which is there for everyone to read, walking alone, almost wandering, and the ebook, the only one that in the continuing crisis of reading in Italy in recent years is attracting new buyers and new readers thanks also to its low cost.

Competition
The competition involved in reading a book is strong: today people spend hours and hours with their eyes fixed on Facebook, WhatsApp and Instagram, blogs and platforms of all kinds to send and receive messages, to see and send photos, to watch films and listen to music. In themselves they might all be wonderful, good and correct, but can they replace reading a good book?
Some doubt is legitimate. For the most part, social media are promoters of a sort of culture of the ephemeral, the transitory, the fragmentary – even without immediately thinking of the flood of fake news – where each new communication eliminates the previous one. The names themselves say it: SMS “short message service” or Twitter, a bird tweeting, Instagram, i.e., quick picture posted on the spot. They convey quick information, very brief sharing of experiences and moods with people you are already in touch with. Books, good books on the other hand, the ones that are thought through and pondered, are able to provoke questions, help us deeply perceive the beauty that is found in nature and art in all its forms, in the solidarity between people, in the passion and heart that we put into everything we do. And not only that, because it is precisely a broad general culture, provided by history books in particular, that offers the ruling classes the flexibility, the ability to orientate, the breadth of horizons that when combined with competence are needed to make the choices of a general and comprehensive nature that are theirs to make. We are becoming aware of the deficit of such a culture in these very days.

Don Bosco’s library
Don Bosco helped thousands of young people grow up as “good Christians and upright citizens” through the dissemination of his books, with his library at Valdocco containing 15,000 books, his print shop, the libraries in individual Salesian houses, with a host of Salesians who wrote books for youth. How melancholic sad it is today to learn that around half a million children in Italy attend schools without a library! Of course, it is easier and more immediately profitable to build new supermarkets, new shopping centres, state-of-the-art cinemas, multinational chains dealing in technology and innovation.
Paper books or online books – today’’s libraries, thanks to technology, offer interesting remote services of various kinds – it makes no difference: as long as they make people grow in humanity. On one condition, however: that they are readable and available to everyone, even to non-digital natives, even to those who do not have the latest generation of tools, even to those who live in disadvantaged situations. Don Bosco wrote in the aforementioned letter: “Remember that St Augustine, who became a bishop, though an exalted master of fine letters and an eloquent orator, preferred inaccuracies in language and no elegance of style to the risk of not being understood by the people.” This is what the sons of Don Bosco continue to do today with books, with popular pamphlets, with videos and materials posted on the web which continue to circulate, today as yesterday, in all languages everywhere, to the ends of the earth.

            In 1849, the printer G. B. Paravia published Il sistema metrico decimale ridotto a semplicità preceded by quattro operazioni dell’aritmetica ad uso degli artigiani e della gente di campagna edited by the priest Bosco Gioanni. The manual included an appendix on the most widely used currencies in Piedmont and the main foreign currencies.
            Yet only a few years earlier Don Bosco knew so little about the noble coins in use in the Kingdom of Sardinia that he confused a doppio di Savoia with a marengo. He was at the beginning of his oratory activity and must have seen very few gold coins until then. Receiving one one day, he ran to spend it on his young urchins, ordering various goods to the value of one marengo. The shopkeeper, both practical and honest, handed over the goods he had ordered and gave him the change of about nine lire.
            “Why so much change” Don Bosco asked, “Wasn’t that a marengo I gave you?”
            “No,”replied the shopkeeper, “it was a coin worth 28 and a ½ lire!” (BM II, 73)
            From the outset Don Bosco was not greedy for money, but only eager to do good!

Doppie di Savoia (Savoy doubles) and marenghi
            In May 1814, when King Victor Emmanuel I returned to possession of his States, he wanted to restore the old monetary system based on the Piedmontese Lira, worth twenty soldi, twelve denari each, a system that had been replaced by the decimal system during the French occupation. Before then, six lire made a silver escudo and 24 a gold Savoy double. There were of course no shortage of smaller coins, including the copper coin known as the Mauriziotto worth 5 soldi, so called because it bore the image of St Maurice on the reverse side.
            But counting in francs had by then become so widespread that the King in 1816 decided to adopt the decimal monetary system as well, creating the New Piedmontese Lira with a value equal to the franc, and its related smaller coins, from the 100 lire gold piece to the 1 cent copper coin.
            The Savoy double, however, continued in use for many more years. Created in 1755 by an edict of Charles Emmanuel III, it was called, after the creation of the new lira, the twenty-nine or twenty-eight-and-a-half lira piece, precisely because it corresponded to 28.45 new lire. It was more commonly called Galin-a (hen) because, while the obverse bore the image of the Sovereign with a pigtail, the reverse showed a bird with spread wings, which the artist had intended to represent an eagle, but, pot-bellied as it was, it looked more like a hen.
            The twenty-franc piece, called a marengo because it was minted by Napoleon in Turin in 1800 after the victory at Marengo, also remained in circulation for quite a while along with the Savoy gold coins. It bore on the obverse the bust of Minerva and on the reverse the motto: Libertà – Egalité – Eridania. It corresponded to the French coin called the gold Napoleon. The term “Eridania” stood for the land where the Po, the legendary Eridano, flows.
            The name marengo was also applied to the 20 lire new gold coin of Victor Emmanuel I, while marenghino was the 10 lire gold coin, therefore with half the value of the marengo, minted later by Charles Albert. Marengo and marenghino were terms often used interchangeably, like franc and lira. Don Bosco also used them in this way. We find an example in the preface to the “Galantuomo” in 1860 (the almanac-strenna for subscribers of the Letture Cattoliche). Don Bosco plays the part of a soft drink salesman following the Sardinian army in the ’59 war. At the battle of Magenta, he recounts, he loses his bag of money and the captain of the company compensates him with a handful of “fifteen glittering marenghini”.
            Writing on 22 May 1866 to Cav. Federico Oreglia, whom he sent to Rome to collect offerings for the new church of Mary Help of Christians, he tells him:
            “As for your stay in Rome, stay for an unlimited time, that is, until you have ten thousand francs to take home for the church and to pay the baker […].
            God bless you, Sir, and bless your labours and may your every word save a soul and earn a marengo. Amen” (E 459).
            Meaningful wish of Don Bosco to a generous collaborator!

Napoleons with and without hats
            From 1 May 1866, in addition to the gold coin, corresponding to the gold napoleon bearing the image of Napoleon with hat on the obverse, a paper currency of the same nominal value, but with a much lower real value, was forcibly issued in the now constituted Kingdom of Italy. The people immediately called it Napoleon with a bare head because it bore the effigy of Victor Emmanuel II without a hat.
            Don Bosco also knew this well when he had to repay Count Federico Calieri a loan of 1,000 francs he had made to him in 50 gold napoleons. He did not miss the opportunity to kill two birds with one stone, taking advantage of the confidence he was granted. Countess Carlotta had in fact already promised him an offering for the new church. He therefore wrote to the Countess on 29 June 1866: “I will tell her that after tomorrow my debt to the Count expires and I must take care to pay the debt in order to acquire the credit. When you were in the Casa Collegno, you told me that at this time you would make a donation for the church and for St Joseph’s altar, but you did not fix the sum precisely. Therefore, have the goodness to tell me:
1) whether your charity involves making donations at this time for us and which ones;
2) where should I direct the money for Mr Conte?
3) if the Count has any payments that he can make with notes, or, as is reasonable, he should change the notes into napoleons according to what I have received” (E 477).
            As one can easily understand, Don Bosco relies on the Countess’s offer and proposes the settlement of his debt to the Count, if it will not be to anyone’s disadvantage, in paper napoleons. The answer came and was consoling. The money was to be sent to Cesare, the son of Count Callori, and could be in paper money. In fact Don Bosco wrote to Caesar on 23 July:
            “Before the end of this month I will bring the thousand francs to your house as you write to me and I will see to it that I bring as many napoleons but all with the head uncovered. For if I were to bring fifty napoleons with the hat on, perhaps they would burn down Jupiter, Saturn and Mars” (E 489).
            And shortly afterwards he would make the very convenient settlement, while the Countess at the same time gave him 1,000 francs for the pulpit of the new church (E 495). If there is a debt to be paid, there is Providence to be had!

Money and mortgages
            But Don Bosco did not only handle marenghi and napoleons. More often than not he found various items of small change, copper coins, in his pocket which he used for ordinary expenses such as taking a carraige when he left Turin, making small purchases and alms and perhaps making some gesture that we would call charismatic ones today, like when he poured the first eight soldi into the hands of the master builder Bozzetti for the construction of the new church of Mary Help of Christians.
            Eight soldi, equal to 4 coins of 10 cents or 8 coins of 5, corresponded to a mutta in the ancient system, a coin struck in copper with some silver, with an initial value of 20 Piedmontese soldi, soon reduced to eight soldi. It was the ancient Piedmontese lira that came into the world through Victor Amadeus III in 1794 and was only abolished in 1865. The word mutta – mota in Piedmontese (read: muta) – in itself means “clod” or “tile”. Mote was the name given to tiles made from oak bark, used for tanning leather, and, after use, still used for burning or keeping a fire burning. These tiles, which used to be as big as a loaf of bread, had been reduced by the avarice of the manufacturers to such minute proportions that the populace ended up calling Vittorio Amedeo’s lirette mote.
            According to the Biographical Memoirs certain Protestant zealots, in order to keep the boys away from Don Bosco’s Oratory, lured them by saying: ‘What are you going to do at the Oratory? Come with us, you will have as much fun as you like and you will get two mutte and a good book as a gift” (MB III, 402) Two mutte were enough to have a good snack.
            But Don Bosco also won people over with his mutte. One day he found himself sitting in the box next to the coachman who was swearing loudly to get the horses to run, and he promised him a mutta if he would refrain from swearing all the way to Turin, and he succeeded in his intention (MB VII, 189). After all, with a mutta the poor coachman could buy himself at least a litre of wine to drink with his colleagues, and at the same time treasure the words he had heard against the vice of blasphemy.

The saint of millions
            Don Bosco handled large sums of money in his life, collected at the price of enormous sacrifices, humiliating quests, laborious lotteries, incessant wanderings. With this money he gave bread, clothing, lodging and work to many poor boys, bought houses, opened hospices and colleges, built churches, launched not indifferent printing and publishing initiatives, launched the Salesian missions in America and, finally, already weakened by the aches and pains of old age, he erected the Basilica of the Sacred Heart in Rome, in obedience to the Pope, a work that was not the least cause of his premature death.
            Not everyone understood the spirit that animated him, not everyone appreciated his multifarious activities and the anticlerical press indulged in ridiculous insinuations.
            On 4 April 1872 the Turin satirical periodical “Il Fischietto”, which nicknamed Don Bosco “Dominus Lignus”, said he was endowed with “fabulous funds” On 31 October 1886 the Roman newspaper “La Riforma”, the Crispini political paper, published an article on his missionary expeditions, ironically presenting the priest of Valdocco as “a true industrialist”, as the man who had understood “that the good market is the key to the success of all the greatest modern enterprises”, and went on to say, “Don Bosco has in him something of that industry that now wants to be nicknamed the Bocconi brothers”. These were the brothers Ferdinando and Luigi Bocconi, creators of the large retail stores opened in Milan in those years and later called “La Rinascente”. Luigi Pietracqua, novelist and dialectal playwright, a few days after Don Bosco’s death signed a satirical sonnet in the Turin newspaper “’L Birichin”, which began as follows:
            “Don Bòsch l’é mòrt – L’era na testa fin-a, Capace ‘d gavé ‘d sangh d’ant un-a rava, Perché a palà ij milion chiel a contava, E… sensa guadagneje con la schin-a!“.
            (Don Bosco is dead – He was an astute man, Capable of drawing blood from a turnip, Because he counted the millions by the handful, And… without earning them by his own sweat).
            And it went on extolling the miracle of Don Bosco who took money from everyone by filling his bag that had become as big as a vat (E as fasìa 7 borsòt gròss com na tina). Enriched in this way, he no longer needed to work, he merely gulled the gulls with prayers, crosses and holy masses. The blasphemous sonneteer concluded by calling Don Bosco “San Milion”.
            Those who know the style of poverty in which the saint lived and died can easily understand what kind of low-class humour Pietracqua was. Don Bosco was indeed a very skilful steward of the money that the charity of the good brought him, but he never kept anything for himself. The furniture in his little room at Valdocco consisted of an iron bed, a small table, a chair and, later, a sofa, with no curtains at the window, no carpets, not even a bedside table. In his last illness, tormented by thirst, when they provided him with a bottle of water seltzer to give him relief, but he did not want to drink it, believing it to be an expensive drink. It was necessary to assure him that it only cost seven cents a bottle. “He once more told Fr Viglietti: ‘Let me also have the pleasure of looking in the pockets of my clothes; there is my wallet and purse. I think there is nothing left; but if there is money, give it to Fr Rua. I want to die so that it will be said: Don Bosco died without a penny in his pocket” (MB XVIII, 493).
            Thus died the Saint of the Millions!

The cause for the canonisation of the servant of God, Constantine Vendrame, is advancing. On 19 September 2023, the volume of the “Positio super Vita, Virtutibus et Fama Sanctitatis” was delivered to the Congregation for the Causes of Saints in the Vatican. Let us briefly introduce this professed priest of the Society of St Francis de Sales.

From the hills of Veneto to the hills of North-East India
The Servant of God Fr Constantine Vendrame was born in San Martino di Colle Umberto (Treviso) on 27 August 1893. San Martino, a hamlet of the larger town of Colle Umberto, is a charming Italian town in the Veneto region in the province of Treviso: From its hills, San Martino faces both the plains furrowed by the Piave river, and the foothills of the Alps in the Belluno area. This same dual nature – a hill town that looks towards the mountains and the plains, the proximity to the larger population centres and ideal projection to the more sober world of the mountains, is what the future missionary Fr Costantino would find in North-East India, squeezed between the first spurs of the Himalayan chain and the Brahmaputra valley.

His family also belonged to the world of simple people: his father Pietro, a blacksmith by profession, and his mother Elena Fiori, originally from Cadore, whom he most likely met in the mountains. Fr Vendrame’s ties with his siblings were strong: Giovanni, of whom he retained faithful memories; Antonia, the mother of a large family; his beloved Angela, to whom he was united by deep affection, in harmony of works and intentions. Angela would remain – with exuberant creativity – at the service of the parish and would offer her suffering and merits for her brother’s apostolic, missionary enterprise. Vivid in the family was also the memory of her elder brother Canciano, who flew to heaven at only 13 years of age. He was baptised the day after his birth (28 August) and confirmed in November 1898, and then lost his his father. Constantine Vendrame made his first communion on 21 July 1904 and spent his childhood with the usual routine tasks. And this is how the priestly vocation took shape as a child. It perhaps has its roots in little Constantino’s entrustment to Our Lady – through his mother’s initiative: an entrustment that then matured into a more complete gift of self.

However, the reality of the seminary – which the Servant of God attended in Ceneda (Vittorio Veneto) with complete success – lacked the missionary inspiration that he felt was his. So, he turned to the Salesians and it was in the Salesian house at Mogliano Veneto that “’in the small porter’s lodge in 1912 with the good Fr Dones that my Salesian and missionary vocation was decided.”
He completed the stages of formation as a religious among the Sons of Don Bosco, in particular as an aspirant (from October 1912 in Verona), novice (from 24 August 1913 in Ivrea), temporary professed (in 1914) and perpetual professed confrere (from 1 January 1920 in Chioggia). He was ordained a priest in Milan on 15 March 1924. From the time he was admitted to the novitiate, he was described a “’very firm in practice, and well educated.” His marks at the seminary had always been excellent and he did well in the Society of St Francis de Sales.
His preparatory course was marked by compulsory military service. These were the years of the Great War: 1914-1918 (for Italy: 1915-1918). In those moments Vendrame as a cleric did not go backwards; he opened up to his superiors; he kept his commitments. The years of the First World War further forged in him the courage that would be so useful to him in his missions.

Missionary of fire

Fr ConstantineVendrame received the missionary crucifix in the Basilica of Mary Help of Christians in Turin on 5 October 1924. A few weeks later he embarked from Venice for India: destination Assam, in the North-East. He arrived there in time for Christmas. On a little picture he wrote, “Sacred Heart of Jesus, everything I have confided in you, everything I have hoped for from you and I have not been deceived.” With the confreres, he meditated during the journey on Meeting the King of Love: “Everything is here: the whole Gospel, the whole Law. I have loved you […]”, “I have loved you more than my life, because I gave my life for you – and when one has given one’s life, one has given everything”. This is the programme of his missionary commitment.

Compared to the younger Salesians – who would have completed most of their formation in India – he arrived there already complete, in full vigour: he was 31 years old and was able to benefit not only from his tough experience in the war, but also from his practical training in the Italian oratories. A beautiful and difficult land awaited him, where paganism of an “animist” stamp dominated and some Protestant sects were openly prejudiced towards the Catholic Church. He chose contact with the people, decided to take the first step: he started with the children, whom he taught to pray and allowed to play. It was these “’little friends” (a few Catholics, some Protestants, almost all non-Christians) who talked about Jesus and the Catholic missionary in the family, who helped Father Vendrame in his apostolate. He was flanked by his confreres – who over the years would recognise him as the “pioneer” of Salesian missionary activity in Assam – and by valid lay collaborators, trained over time.
Of this early period, traces remain of a missionary of “fire”, animated by the sole interest in the glory of God and the salvation of souls. His style became that of the Apostle to the Gentiles, to whom he would be compared for the propulsive efficacy of his proclamation and the strong attraction of the pagans to Christ. “Woe to me if I do not proclaim the Gospel!” (cf. 1 Cor 9:16), says Fr Vendrame with his life. He exposed himself to all wear and tear, as long as Christ is proclaimed. Truly for him too “Countless journeys, dangers from the rivers […], dangers from the pagans […]; hardship and toil, vigils without number, hunger and thirst, frequent fasting, cold and nakedness” (cf. 2 Cor 11:26-27). The Servant of God became a walker in North-East India with all kinds of dangers; he supported himself with a very meagre diet; he faced late night returns or nights spent almost freezing cold.

Always in the trenches
At the outbreak of the Second World War and in the years that followed, Fr Costantino Vendrame was able to benefit from – at times of particular “environmental” fatigue (military camps; extreme poverty in South India) and “ecclesial” hardship (harsh opposition in North East India) – a whole range of prior training: in the custody of the Gurkhas; in Deoli; in Dehra Dun; missionary in Wandiwash in Tamil Nadu; in Mawkhar in Assam. In Deoli he was “rector” of the religious in the camp; also in Dehra Dun he set an example.
Liberated at the end of the war, but prevented by political reasons completely foreign to him as a person from returning to Assam, Fr Vendrame – who was over 50 and worn out by privations – was assigned by Louis Mathias, Archbishop of Madras, to Tamil Nadu. There Fr Costantino had to start all over again: once again, he knew how to make himself deeply loved, aware – as he wrote in a 1950 letter to his brother priests in the Diocese of Vittorio Veneto – of the extremely harsh conditions of his missionary mandate:
He was convinced that there was good to be done everywhere and wherever there were souls to be saved. Remaining “ad experimentum”, so as to guarantee continuity to the poor mission, he finally returned to Assam: he could rest, but plans were made to establish a Catholic presence in Mawkhar, a district of Shillong then considered the “fort” of the Protestants.
And it was precisely in Mawkhar that the Servant of God achieved his “masterpiece”: the birth of a Catholic community that is still flourishing today, in which – in years far removed from today’s ecumenical sensibility – the Catholic presence was first harshly opposed, then tolerated, then accepted and finally esteemed. The unity and charity witnessed by Fr Vendrame was for Mawkhar an unprecedented and “scandalous” proclamation, which won over the hardest hearts and attracted the benevolence of many: he had brought the “honey of St Francis”- that is, Salesian loving-kindness, inspired by the gentleness of Salesian – to a land where souls had closed.

Towards the finish line
When pain became insistent, he admitted in a letter: “with difficulty I was able to manage the work of the day.” The last stretch of the earthly journey unfolded. The day arrived when he asked to check if there was any food left: a unique request for Fr Vendrame, who made himself enough of the essentials and, returning late, never wanted to disturb for dinner. That evening he could not even articulate a few sentences: he was exhausted, aged prematurely. He had kept silent until the very end, prey to an arthritis that also affected his spine.
Hospitalization then loomed, but at Dibrugarh: it would spare him the constant flocking of people; the pain of helplessly witnessing their father’s agony. The Servant of God would go so far as to faint from pain: every movement became terrible for him.
Bishop Orestes Marengo – his friend and former cleric, Bishop of Dibrugarh, the Sisters of the Child Mary, some lay people, the medical staff including many nurses, won over by his gentleness.
Everyone recognised him as a true man of God: even non-Christians. Fr Vendrame in his suffering could say, like Jesus “I am not alone, for the Father is with me”(cf. Jn 16:32).
Tried by illness and complications from pneumonia, he died on 30 January 1957 on the eve of the feast of St John Bosco. Just a few days earlier (24 January), in his last letter to his sister Angela he was still thinking of his apostolate, lucid in suffering but a man of hope always.
He was so poor that he did not even have a suitable burial robe: Bishop Marengo gave him one of his own so that he could be more worthily clothed. One witness recounts how handsome Fr Costantino looked in death, even better than in life, finally freed from the “fatigues” and “strains” that had marked so many decades.
After an initial funeral / farewell service in Diburgarh, the wake and solemn funeral took place in Shillong. The people flocked with so many flowers that it looked like a Eucharistic procession. The crowd was immense, many approached the sacraments of Reconciliation and Communion: this generalised attitude of drawing closer to God, even on the part of those who had turned away from Him, was one of the greatest signs that accompanied Fr Constantine’s death.

(continuation from previous article)

5. After all, can I do it alone?

Dear young people,
I have learnt first-hand how important it is to have spiritual guidance in one’s life.
In 1586, when I was 19 years old, I experienced one of the greatest crises in my life and tried to resolve it on my own, but with little success. From this experience I realised that do-it-yourself is not possible in the spiritual life, because in the human heart strong tensions are constantly being played out between love of God and love of self, and that they are difficult to resolve without the help of a person to accompany you on the journey.
So, once I arrived in Padua to pursue my university studies, my first concern was to find a good spiritual guide with whom I could draw up a personal life programme and thus take my journey of growth seriously.
Here I experienced that perfectionism and voluntarism cannot be the elements that make one walk in a full life, but only the acceptance of one’s own fragility handed over completely to God.
Even after becoming a priest, I continued my path of accompaniment and spiritual direction; I discovered, however, the importance of sharing the journey of my interior life with my cousin Louis de Sales and, above all, with Antoine Favre, Senator of Savoy. Despite the diversity of our vocations, we shared a true spiritual friendship and walked together in the ways of the Lord.
It was also important in my life to have a confessor with whom I could open my conscience and ask God for forgiveness. This accompanied me to fight sin at its root and to become free.
Rely on a spiritual guide, a person familiar with God and whom you trust, with whom you can open your heart and read your story in the light of Faith, so that you can become aware of and emphasise the gifts you have received and the great possibilities open before you. For me, there is no true spiritual direction if there is no friendship, i.e. exchange, communication, mutual influence. This is the basic climate that enables spiritual direction.
I suggest a small path that has been helpful for me to walk with my spiritual guide and that has enabled me to find inner balance:
– start from your real life and the concrete situation in which you live with its resources and limitations, trying to make unity in the many experiences you have. Your life, in fact, runs the risk of being filled with so many things to do without meaning and direction. One suggestion I give you is not to be distracted and always be present in the present moment.
– During your days you are drawn to and oscillate between different forces, sometimes not harmonious with each other: that of the senses, emotions, rationality and faith. What allows you to find the balance between them is dedication, that is, always putting your heart into the things you do, with the awareness that every moment is an opportunity and a call to fulfil God’s will in your life.
You may ask, what is the point of making the effort to be accompanied? The authenticity of your life is at stake: to you who are caught up in anxieties, fears and worries, the path of accompaniment will help you discover who you really are, but above all for Whom you are.

Office for Vocational Animation

(continued)

Don Bosco wrote at night by candlelight, after a day spent in prayer, talks, meetings, study, courtesy visits. Always practical, tenacious, with a prodigious vision of the future.

“Da mihi animas, cetera tolle” is the motto that inspired all of Don Bosco’s life and action from time of the wandering Oratory in Turin (1844) to his final initiatives on his deathbed (January 1888) for the Salesians to go to England and Ecuador. But for him souls were not separated from bodies, so much so that since the 1950s he had proposed to dedicate his life so that young people would be “happy on earth and then in heaven.” Earthly happiness for his “poor and abandoned” young people consisted in having a roof, a family, a school, a playground, friendships and pleasant activities (games, music, theatre, outings…) and above all a profession that would guarantee them a serene future.
This explains the “arts and trades” workshops at Valdocco – the future vocational schools – that Don Bosco created from nothing: an authentic start-up, to put it in today’s terms. He had initially offered himself as the first instructor for tailoring, bookbinding, shoemaking… but progress did not stop and Don Bosco wanted to be at the forefront.

The availability of engines
Starting in 1868, at the initiative of the mayor of Turin, Giovanni Filippo Galvagno, some of the Ceronda stream, which had its source at an altitude of 1,350 m, were captured by the Ceronda Canal to be distributed to various industries that were springing up in the northern area of the Piedmontese capital, Valdocco to be precise. The canal was then divided into two branches at the height of the Lucento district, the one on the right, completed in 1873, after crossing the Dora Riparia with a canal, continued to run parallel to what is now Corso Regina Margherita and Via San Donato to then discharge into the Po. Don Bosco, ever vigilant to what was happening in the city, immediately asked the City Hall for “the concession of at least 20 horsepower of water power” from the canal that would pass alongside Valdocco. Once the request was granted, he had the two inlets built at his own expense, arranged the machines in the workshops so that they could easily receive the motive power, and had an engineer study the engines needed for the purpose. When everything was ready, he asked the authorities on 4 July 1874 to proceed with the connection at his own expense. For several months he received no answer, so on 7 November he renewed his request. The response this time came fairly quickly. It seemed positive, but he asked for some clarifications first. Don Bosco replied in the following terms:

“Your Excellency the Mayor,
I hasten to convey to Your Excellency, the clarifications that I was pleased to ask you for in your letter of the 19th of this month, and I have the honour of notifying you that the industries to which the horsepower from the Ceronda water will be applied are:
1st Printing works for which no fewer than 100 workers are employed.
2nd Pulp factory with no fewer than 26 workers.
3rd Typeface foundry, copper engraving with no fewer than 30 workers.
4th Iron workshop with no fewer than 30 workers.
5th Carpenters, cabinet-makers, turners with hydraulic saw: no fewer than 40 workers.
Total workers more than 220.”

This number included instructors and young students. Given the situation, besides being subjected to unnecessary physical exertion, they would not have been able to withstand the competition. In fact, Don Bosco added: “These works are now done at the expense of a steam engine for the printing works, but for the other workshops they are done by manpower, in such a way that they could not withstand the competition of those who use water power.”
And in order to avoid possible delays and fears on the part of the public authorities, he immediately offered a warning: “We do not object to depositing a bill of public debt as security, as soon as it can be known what it should be.”

He always thought big… but was content with the possible
He had to think about the future, about new laboratories, new machines and so the demand for electricity would necessarily increase. Don Bosco then raised the demand and cited existential and contextual reasons:
“But while I accept the theoretical strength of ten horsepower, I find myself needing to note that this is totally insufficient for my needs, since the project which is being carried out was based on 30 [?] as I had the honour of expounding in my letter of November last. For this reason, I would ask you to take into consideration the construction work already underway, the nature of this institute, which lives on charity alone, the number of workers involved, the fact that we were among the first to subscribe and therefore be willing to grant us, if not the 30 horsepower promised, at least the largest amount available…”
“Word to the wise, one might say.

A successful entrepreneur
The amount of water granted to the Oratory on that occasion has not come down to us. The fact remains that Don Bosco once again demonstrates the qualities of a capable entrepreneur that everyone at the time recognised and still recognises in him today: a story of moral integrity, the right mix of humility and self-confidence, determination and courage, communication skills and an eye to the future. Obviously, the fuel for all his ambitions and aspirations was a single passion: souls. He had many collaborators, but somehow everything fell on his shoulders. Tangible proof of this are the thousands of letters, just one of which we have published here, corrected and re-corrected several times: letters he usually wrote in the evening or at night by candlelight, after a day spent in prayer, talks, meetings, study, courtesy calls. While drawing up his plans by day, by night he was then able to dream up how they would develop. And these would come in the following decades, with the hundreds of Salesian vocational schools scattered around the world, with tens of thousands of boys (and then girls) who would find a springboard to a future full of hope in them.