Christ is RISEN!

Remember Jesus Christ, raised from the dead… (cf. 2 Tit 2:8)

A Holy Easter to all our readers!

We are witnessing today an indifference or contempt for sacramentals. Blessings on people, water, religious images, and their use, like other sacramentals, no longer have value in the eyes of many Christians today. Surely this attitude has something to do with abuses or superstitions that have distorted their true meaning. But it cannot be denied that there is also great ignorance about them. Let us try to shed some light on it.

Originally, sacramentals (also called little sacraments) were simple ceremonies that accompanied the celebration of the seven sacraments, and also the pious works and all the canonical prayer of the Church. Today, the notion of sacramentals is reserved for certain rites, instituted by the Church, that are not in themselves part of the celebration of the seven sacraments, but are similar in structure to the sacraments, and that the Church uses to obtain primarily spiritual effects through their intercession.

These are sacred signs which bear a resemblance to the sacraments. They signify effects, particularly of a spiritual nature, which are obtained through the intercession of the Church. By them men are disposed to receive the chief effect of the sacraments, and various occasions in life are rendered holy (Catechism of the Catholic Church – CCC, 1667).
Sacramentals are instituted for the sanctification of certain ministries of the Church, certain states of life, a great variety of circumstances in Christian life, and the use of many things helpful to man. In accordance with bishops’ pastoral decisions, they can also respond to the needs, culture, and special history of the Christian people of a particular region or time. They always include a prayer, often accompanied by a specific sign, such as the laying on of hands, the sign of the cross, or the sprinkling of holy water (CCC, 1668).
Sacramentals do not confer the grace of the Holy Spirit in the way that the sacraments do, but by the Church’s prayer, they prepare us to receive grace and dispose us to cooperate with it (CCC 1670).

They are first and foremost blessings of persons, of objects, of places.
Certain blessings have a lasting importance because they consecrate persons to God, or reserve objects and places for liturgical use. Among those blessings which are intended for persons – not to be confused with sacramental ordination – are the blessing of the abbot or abbess of a monastery, the consecration of virgins, the rite of religious profession and the blessing of certain ministries of the Church (readers, acolytes, catechists, etc.). the dedication or blessing of a church or an altar, the blessing of holy oils, vessels, and vestments, bells, etc., can be mentioned as examples of blessings that concern objects.
And they are also exorcisms. When the Church asks publicly and authoritatively in the name of Jesus Christ that a person or object be protected against the power of the Evil One and withdrawn from his dominion, it is called exorcism (CCC 1671-1673).

They are established by the Church, and only the Apostolic See alone can establish new sacramentals, authentically interpret those already received, or abolish or change any of them. (Code of Canon Law – CCC, can. 1167, §1).
The sacramentals are presented in the Roman Ritual (especially in the Ritual of Blessings and the Ritual of Exorcisms), where the forms and rites for imparting them are collected, the careful observance of the rites and formulas approved by the Church being required (CDC, can. 1167, §2).

Their value lies primarily in the prayer of the Church (opus operantis Ecclesiae), but in order for them to produce their effect, living faith is required, because sacramentals do not act like sacraments ex opere operato, but ex opere operantis, that is, they are conditioned by the faith of the one receiving them. And this is where the low esteem of the sacramentals appears: when they are not received with faith, they produce no effects and this leads to the false opinion that they have no virtue.

In their use, one must avoid both a lack of reverence and respect (they are an intercession of the Church) and a superstitious or magical type of use. Sacramentals do not change the nature of the reality on which they act, but are an expression of belonging to God.
Blessed objects are not amulets (objects of various natures and forms to which superstition ascribes a protective virtue against illness or misfortune, a virtue that resides in the object itself), but are sacred signs that remind us that God is always near us with his grace.

To summarise, sacramentals consist immediately and firstly in a prayer of intercession that the Church addresses to God, and only secondly and mediately, that is, through this prayer of intercession by the Church, in a sanctification, inasmuch as the Church, by means of these rites, imparts from God the sanctification of persons or things.

Persons and things, without being made true instrumental causes of grace, nor being perfected and elevated in their natural qualities, nevertheless in consideration of the Church’s intercessory prayer, are taken under the special divine protection or acceptance for the spiritual good of those who possess or use them with due dispositions, offering the opportunity to better work out their salvation.

Since they are consecrated things, that same acceptance of God also implies that He will give special graces to those who use them with due dispositions of mind; and, in the case of consecrated persons, it implies in these persons a moral title before God to obtain in due time the graces of state necessary to fulfil the duties entailed by that permanent consecration.

It is believed that in the sacramentals the Church immediately asks for and obtains actual graces for the person to whom she imparts them, such as contrition of sins, acts of faith, of hope, of charity, which are dispositions favourable to the good use of the sacraments or acts of perfect charity. To the use of the sacraments and acts of perfect charity it is believed that God has reserved the sanctifying grace or its increase to be given immediately (Cipriano Vagaggini, Il senso teologico della liturgia).

These are some explanations that attempt to shed some light on the sacramentals. However, confirmation of their value comes, as always, from the saints.

St John Bosco used them a great deal, and it is enough here to mention just one of them, holy water, which he also wanted his boys to use.

In his Regulations of the Oratory he recommended to the boys that “…  He shall see that each one enters the church in an orderly manner, blesses himself devoutly with holy water, and genuflects before the Blessed Sacrament.” (BM III, 443).

And not only in the church did he request the use of holy water, but also in the dormitories and study rooms:
            “The dormitory was regarded as somewhat sacred. Don Bosco had prescribed that at its entrance ( and later also in every study hall) there should be a small holy water font.” (BM IV, 235).

He instilled the efficacy of holy water whenever he could. He told his young people in a good night:
            “There is in St. Peter’s a really beautiful holy water stoup whose bowl is supported by a marble ensemble symbolizing temptation. A long-tailed and horned frightening devil is pursuing a boy. The youngster, seeing himself about to fall prey to that ugly beast, reaches in panic into the holy water font. Dismayed, the devil no longer dares to seize him.
Holy water, my dear boys, is good for chasing away temptations. Don’t we say about a fast runner, “He runs like the devil from holy water”? When tempted, and especially when entering a church, make the Sign of the Cross well, because it is there that the devil is waiting for you to make you lose the fruit of prayer. The simple Sign of the Cross repels him momentarily, but when joined to holy water it keeps him away for a long time.
One day St. Teresa was tempted. At every assault she made the Sign of the Cross, but within a few minutes she would feel tempted again. Annoyed by this, she sprinkled holy water on herself, and the devil had to beat a hasty retreat” (BM VIII, 316).

St John Bosco always held the sacramentals in high esteem. His own simple blessing was much sought after by people because it produced truly miraculous effects. One would have to draw up a list too long to recall how many spiritual and bodily healings his blessings received in faith produced. It is enough to read his life for this.

At the end of the Marian prayer on Sunday, 9 July 2023, Pope Francis announced the creation of 21 new cardinals, including the Rector Major of the Salesians, Fr Angel FERNANDEZ ARTIME.

We wish our Rector Major many graces from the Lord to guide him in the new mission entrusted to him by the Universal Church!

The official news can be found HERE.

Pope Montini knew the Salesians closely, appreciated them, always encouraged and supported them in their educational mission.
Other popes before him, and after him, have shown great signs of affection for the Salesian Society. We recall some of them.

The two Popes at the origin and development of Salesian work
There were two Popes with whom Don Bosco had direct dealings. First of all, Blessed Pius IX, the Pope whom he supported at tragic times for the Church, whose authority, rights and prestige he defended, so much so that his opponents called him “the Garibaldi of the Vatican”. He was reciprocated with numerous affectionate private audiences, many concessions and indulgences. The Pope also supported him financially. During his pontificate, the Salesian Society, its Constitutions, the Institute of the Daughters of Mary Help of Christians (FMA), the Pious Union of Salesian Cooperators, the Mary Help of Christians association were all approved. He appointed himself protector of the Society.
He was succeeded by Pope Leo XIII who in turn accepted to be the first Salesian Cooperator, treated Don Bosco with unusual warmth and granted him the privileges that were now essential for the rapid and prodigious development of the Congregation. He directed the first Apostolic Vicariate entrusted to the Salesians, appointing the first bishop in the person of Bishop Giovanni Cagliero in 1883. In his first audience with Fr Rua after Don Bosco’s death, he was generous with advice for the consolidation of the Salesian Society.

The two (future) Popes who sat at Don Bosco’s table
St Pius X as a simple canon met with Don Bosco in Turin in 1875, sat at his table and was enrolled among the Salesian Cooperators. He left highly edified. As Bishop and Patriarch of Venice he gave proof of benevolence towards the Salesian Society. In 1907 he signed the decree introducing the apostolic process of Don Bosco and in 1914 for St Dominic Savio as well. In 1908 he appointed Bishop Cagliero as Apostolic Delegate to Central America. He was the first Salesian Cooperator raised to the honour of the altars.
As a young priest in 1883, Pius XI also visited Don Bosco at the Oratory, staying there for two days. He sat at Don Bosco’s table and left full of deep and pleasant memories. He spared no means to quickly promote the apostolic process of Don Bosco, wanting to set no less than the date of Easter 1934, the close of the Holy Year, as the date of his canonisation. Thanks to him Dominic Savio’s cause overcame difficulties that seemed insurmountable: in 1933 he signed the decree of the heroicity of his virtues; in 1936 he proclaimed the heroicity of the virtues of St Mary Mazzarello, whom he beatified on 20th November 1938. Other signs of predilection for the Salesian Society were the granting of the Indulgence of Sanctified Work (1922) and the elevation to the purple of Polish Cardinal Augustus Hlond (1927).

The most Salesian pope
If Pius XI was rightly called the “Pope of Don Bosco”, perhaps just as rightly the “most Salesian Pope” was Pope St. Paul VI for the knowledge, esteem and affection shown to the Salesian society, without wishing to underestimate other previous or subsequent Popes. Father Giorgio, a journalist, was a great admirer of Don Bosco (not yet Blessed), whose autographed painting he kept in his study, and was often admired by young Giovanni Battista. During his studies in Turin, the young Montini had wavered between choosing the Benedictine life he had known at San Bernardino di Chiari (which later became a Salesian house, it still is today), and Salesian life. A few days after his priestly ordination (Brescia 29 May 1920), he asked the bishop, even before receiving his pastoral destination, if he could choose his own. In that case he would have liked to go with Don Bosco. The bishop decided instead on studies in Rome. But after one Montini who had failed to become a Salesian came another. A few years after that interview, his cousin Luigi (1906-1963) told him of his desire to become a priest too. The future pope, who knew him well, told him that given his lively temperament, Salesian life would be good for him and so he took advice from the famous Salesian Fr Cojazzi. The advice was positive, and upon hearing the news Fr Giovanni was so pleased that his cousin would take his place that he himself accompanied him to the Salesian missionary aspirantate in Ivrea. He would then be a missionary for 17 years in China and later in Brazil until his death. Completing the Salesianity of the Montini family was the presence, for about ten years, in the Salesian house at Colle Don Bosco of one of Enrico’s brothers, Luigi (19051973).
There is no need to say how close Bishop Montini was to the Salesians in the various responsibilities he assumed: for example as Substitute at the Secretariat of State or in the very early post-war period in Rome for the nascent Borgo Don Bosco work for the sciuscià (shoe-shine boys), then as Archbishop of Milan at the end of the 1950s asking them to take over the Arese barabitt, and finally as Pope in supporting the entire Salesian Congregation and Family, erecting among other things the Pontifical Salesian University and the Pontifical Faculty of Educational Sciences at the FMA Auxilium.
He spoke several times of his immense esteem for Salesian work, missionary work in particular, in private audiences given the Rector Major Fr Luigi Ricceri as ell as in public audiences. One of the most famous was the private audience granted to the Chapter Members of General Chapter 20 on 20 December 1971. Obviously in many speeches given to the Salesians, of Milan in particular, he demonstrated a profound knowledge of the Salesian charism and its potential.

In order to make it easier for readers to access the new features of this publication, as to the static part of the site, every now and then – when we accumulate some changes worth mentioning – we will do an update via an article.

For now, we would like to point out the opening of the social media channels Facebook and Twitter, which allow you to stay up-to-date on new articles via these services, in addition to the FEED-RSS and Newsletter, already present since the launch. You will find the links at the bottom of the page (in the footer).

The Salesian Bulletin Archive has been enriched with issues of the printed Italian Salesian Bulletin up to the year 1901. This is a new scanning in high definition and character recognition (OCR) to allow a more accurate search. The intention is to offer the complete collection of this Bulletin, including supplementary issues, which have never been presented.
The indexes are available for now from the beginning, from August 1877, until May 1883; later they will also be completed.
We have thought of offering quick access to the issues of this publication, creating a page especially for this purpose, which can be accessed via the link indicated in the initial text of the Salesian Bulletin Archive page, and also found HERE.
Please note that the page is only available in Italian because the Bulletin is in Italian. However, as the PDFs are searchable, the texts can be selected, copied and have them translated using Google ® Translate or other similar services.

We thank you for your attention and wish you fruitful reading.

Christ is RISEN!

“Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who in his great mercy gave us a new birth to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead to an inheritance that is imperishable, undefiled, and unfading”. (1Pe. 1,3-4)

Holy Easter to all our readers!

Readers of the Salesian Bulletin already know about the intercontinental journey that Don Bosco’s Casket went on a few years ago. The mortal remains of our saint reached dozens and dozens of countries around the world and lingered in a thousand cities and towns, welcomed everywhere with admiration and sympathy. I do not know which saint’s body has travelled so far and which Italian corpse has been received so enthusiastically beyond the borders of its own country. Perhaps none.

While this ‘journey’ is already known history, the intercontinental of the ACSSA (Association of Salesian History Scholars) from November 2018 to March 2019 is certainly not. It was to coordinate a series of four Study Seminars promoted by the same Association in Bratislava (Slovakia), Bangkok (Thailand), Nairobi (Kenya), Buenos Aires (Argentina). The fifth was held in Hyderabad (India) in June 2018.

Well: on these trips I did not see the Salesian houses, colleges, schools, parishes, missions as I have done on other occasions and as anyone who travels a bit anywhere from the north to the south, from the east to the west of the world can do; instead I encountered a story of Don Bosco, all yet to be written.

The other Don Boscos

The theme of the Study Seminars was in fact to present figures of deceased Salesians and Daughters of Mary Help of Christians who, over a short or long period of their lives, had stood out as particularly significant and relevant, and above all had left their mark after their death. Some of them, then, were authentic “innovators” of the Salesian charism, capable of inculturating it in the most varied ways, obviously in absolute fidelity to Don Bosco and his spirit.

The result was a gallery of a hundred or so men and women of the 20th century, all different from each other, who knew how to make themselves “other Don Boscos”: that is, to open their eyes to their land of birth or mission, to become aware of the material, cultural and spiritual needs of the young people living there, especially the poorest, and to “invent” the best way of satisfying them.

Bishops, priests, nuns, lay Salesians, members of the Salesian Family: all figures, men and women, who without being saints – in our research we excluded saints and those already on their way to the altars – have fully realised Don Bosco’s educational mission in different spheres and roles: as educators and priests, as professors and teachers, animators of oratories and youth centres, founders and directors of educational works, formators of vocations and new religious institutes, as writers and musicians, architects and builders of churches and colleges, artists of wood and painting, missionaries ad gentes, witnesses of the faith in prison, simple Salesians and simple Daughters of Mary Help of Christians. Among them, not a few have often lived a life of hard sacrifices, overcoming obstacles of all kinds, learning very difficult languages, often risking death for lack of acceptable sanitary conditions, impossible climatic conditions, hostile and persecutory political regimes, even actual attacks. The latest of these happened just as I was leaving for Nairobi: Spanish Salesian, Fr Cesare Fernández, murdered in cold blood on 15 February 2018 at the border between Togo and Burkina Faso. One of the most recent Salesians ‘martyrs’, we could call him, knowing the individual as I did.

A story to learn about

What can we say then? That this too is the unknown history of Don Bosco, or, if you like, of the Sons and Daughters of the saint? If the saint’s casket has been received, as we were saying, with so much respect and esteem by public authorities and the simple population even in non-Christian countries, it means that his Sons and Daughters have not only sung his praises – this too has certainly been done, since Don Bosco’s image can be found just about everywhere – but have also realised his dreams: to make God’s love for young people known, to bring the good news of the Gospel everywhere, to the end of the world (in Tierra del Fuego!).

Those who, like me and my colleagues from ACSSA, were able in February and March 2018 to listen to experiences of Salesian life lived in the 20th century in some fifty countries on four continents, can only affirm, as Don Bosco often did when looking at the impressive development of the congregation before his eyes: ‘Here is the finger of God’.  If the finger of God has been in Salesian works and foundations, it has also been in the men and women who have consecrated their entire lives to the evangelical ideal realised in the manner of Don Bosco.

Are these presented to us as “next door saints”? Some certainly, even considering their personal limitations, their characters, their whims, and, why not, their sins (which only God knows). All, however, were endowed with immense faith, great hope, strong charity and generosity, much love for Don Bosco and souls. Some of them – think of the pioneer missionaries in Patagonia – one might be tempted to call real “madmen”, madmen for God and for souls of course.

The concrete results of this story are there for all to see, but the names of many have remained almost ‘invisible’ until now. We can get to know them by reading “Volti di uno stesso carisma: Salesiani e Figlie di Maria Ausiliatrice nel XX secolo” (Faces of the same charism: Salesians and Daughters of Mary Help of Christians in the 20th century), a multilingual book, published by Editrice LAS, in the”Associazione Cultori Storia Salesiana – Studi” series (not yet available in English).

If evil leaves its mark, so does good. ‘Bonum est diffusivum sui‘ wrote St Thomas Aquinas centuries ago. The Salesians and Salesian women presented at our seminars are proof of this; alongside them or following them, others have done the same, until today.

Let us briefly introduce these new faces of Don Bosco.