On 24 October last, the Holy Father wished to renew devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus through the publication of the encyclical Dilexit nos, in which he explained the reasons for this choice:

“Some have questioned whether this symbol is still meaningful today. Yet living as we do in an age of superficiality, rushing frenetically from one thing to another without really knowing why, and ending up as insatiable consumers and slaves to the mechanisms of a market unconcerned about the deeper meaning of our lives, all of us need to rediscover the importance of the heart.”

We too wish to emphasise the value of this devotion, deeply rooted in the Salesian tradition. Don Bosco, inspired by the spirituality of St Francis de Sales, was keenly aware of the devotion to the Sacred Heart, promoted by one of St Francis’ daughters, St Margaret Mary Alacoque, a Visitation Nun. This devotion was a continuous source of inspiration for him, and we propose to explore it in a series of future articles. Suffice it, for now, to recall the Salesian coat of arms, in which Don Bosco wanted to include the Sacred Heart, and the Roman basilica dedicated to the Sacred Heart of Jesus, which he himself undertook to have built in Rome, spending time, energy and resources.
His successor, Blessed Michael Rua, continued in the founder’s wake, cultivating devotion and consecrating the Salesian Congregation to the Sacred Heart of Jesus.
In this month of November we wish to recall his circular letter, written 124 years ago, on 21 November 1900, to prepare for this consecration, which we present here in full.

‘The Consecration of our Pious Society to the Sacred Heart of Jesus

Dear Brothers and boys,
                For a long time and in many places I have been asked with great insistence to consecrate our Pious Society to the Sacred Heart of Jesus with a solemn and authoritative act. Especially insisting on this were our novitiate and studentate houses, united in a holy league, and the cherished memory of that unforgettable confrere of ours who was Father Andrea Beltrami. After a long delay, advised by prudence, I believe it appropriate to grant these supplications now, as the nineteenth century comes to an end and the twentieth century advances, full of many hopes.
                Already on many occasions I have recommended devotion to the most sacred Heart of Jesus to my boys and Salesian confreres, as well as to our Sisters, the Daughters of Mary Help of Christians, and convinced that it would bring great spiritual benefits to each of us, last year I decreed that every Salesian should consecrate himself to him. These recommendations were well received by everyone; my requests were scrupulously carried out, and the benefits I expected were abundantly obtained.
Now I intend that each one consecrate himself anew, in a very special way, to this most sacred Heart; indeed, I desire that each rector consecrate the house over which he presides entirely to him, and invite the young people to make this holy offering of themselves, instruct them in the great act that they are about to perform, and give them the facility to prepare themselves appropriately for it.
Christians can be told about the Heart of Jesus what Saint John the Baptist used to say to the Jews speaking about the divine Saviour: “There is one among you, whom you do not know.” And in this regard we can also repeat Jesus’ words to the Samaritan woman: “Oh, if you only knew the gift of God!” How much greater will be the love and trust our members and our youth feel towards Jesus if they are well instructed in this devotion!
                The Lord has granted graces to each of us, he has granted them to individual houses; but he has been even more generous with his favours towards the Congregation that is our mother. Our Pious Society was and is continually blessed in a very special way by the goodness of Jesus, who sees how much we need absolutely extraordinary graces to shake our lukewarmness, to renew ourselves in fervour, and to carry out the great task that God entrusted to us: it is right, therefore, that our Pious Society be entirely consecrated to that most sacred Heart. Let us all together present ourselves to Jesus, and we will be dear to him as those who offer him not only every flower from their garden, but the garden itself; not only the various fruits of the tree, but the tree itself. Since, if he accepts the consecration of individual persons, he must deem the consecration of an entire community even more acceptable to him, for this is like a legion, a phalanx, an army that offers itself to him.
                It seems that this is truly the time desired by divine Providence to perform the solemn act. The circumstance appears very favourable and opportune. It would seem beautiful and, I would say, sublime, in the moment that divides two centuries, to present ourselves to Jesus as expiatory souls for the wrongdoings of the one, and apostles to win over the other to his love. Oh, how blessed Jesus will then look kindly upon our various houses, which have become like so many altars on which we offer the contrition of our hearts and our best physical and moral energies to him. How he will bless our Society, which gathers these scattered holocausts from around the world into one grandiose offering, to prostrate itself at Jesus’ feet and cry out on behalf of his children: “Oh Jesus! Thank you, thank you; forgive, forgive; help, help!” And to say to him, “Jesus, we are already yours by right, having been bought by you with your most precious blood, but we also want to be yours by choice and by spontaneous, absolute consecration: our houses are already yours by right, as you are the master of all things, but we want them to be yours, and yours alone, by our spontaneous will; we consecrate them to you. Our Pious Society is already yours by right, since you have inspired it, you have founded it, you have brought it forth, so to speak, from your very Heart. Well, we want to confirm this right of yours; we want it, thanks to the offering we make to you, to become like a temple in the midst of which we can truthfully say that the Lord, master and king, our Saviour Jesus Christ dwells!” Yes, Jesus, overcome every difficulty, reign, rule among us: you have the right, you deserve it, we want it.”
These are the desires, the sighs, the intentions of our heart: let us seek to draw constant inspiration from them and to invigorate them in the love of God in this very special circumstance.
                Therefore, dear friends, the great moment has come to make our consecration and that of our whole Pious Society to the divine Heart of Jesus, public and solemn. The moment has come to make the external and authoritative act, so much desired, by which we declare that we and the Congregation are sacred to the divine Heart. It is now necessary to establish some practical rules which can regulate this important function.
I intend, above all, that this solemn Consecration be prepared for by a devout three-day period of prayers and preaching which will appropriately begin on the evening of the Holy Innocents, 28 December, the day on which Saint Francis de Sales, our great patron, died.
I intend, secondly, that the act of Consecration be enacted by all together, young people, novices, confreres, superiors of every house, as well as by the greatest number of cooperators that can be gathered. Those among the confreres who find themselves outside their own community and cannot return, due to some circumstance, should make an effort to go to the nearest Salesian house and join there in this act with the other confreres. Those who cannot conveniently come to one of our houses should still carry out this consecration in the best way possible, as circumstances allow them.
Thirdly, I establish that this function shall take place in the church, on the night of 31 December as it leads to 1 January, precisely at the solemn moment that divides the two centuries. You also know that for this year the Holy Father has stipulated that the Holy Mass may be solemnly celebrated with the Blessed Sacrament exposed at midnight on 31 December. Now, in our case it will be appropriate that when gathered in the church half an hour before, there be exposition of the Blessed Sacrament: and after at least fifteen minutes of adoration, all baptisms vows be renewed by everyone, religious vows also be renewed by the confreres, and then the consecration of oneself, one’s house, and of all human society to the Sacred Heart of Jesus be done, following the form prescribed by the Holy Father last year. At that very moment, together with the Superior Chapter, using an appropriate formulary I will consecrate the entire Congregation.
                After this, the Holy Mass shall be celebrated in every house, followed by Benediction of the Blessed Sacrament, preceded by the singing of the Te Deum, and by any other practices ordered by the Holy Father or by individual bishops for that occasion. 
In the festive Oratories and wherever, due to any circumstance, it may not be possible or appropriate to hold this function at midnight, it can be done the following morning at the most suitable time, as the Holy Father has granted permission to have the Blessed Sacrament exposed from midnight until noon on the first of January, furthermore granting a plenary indulgence to those who, in the meantime, spend an hour in adoration there.
                I would not want this Consecration to be a sterile act: it must be a source of great good to us and our neighbour. The act of consecration is brief, but the fruit must be imperishable. And to obtain this, I believe it appropriate to recommend some special practices to you, approved and commended by the Church, and enriched by many indulgences. While they will keep alive the memory of this great act, they will also serve to increasingly arouse this devotion in us, in the young, and in the faithful entrusted to our care.
I therefore propose that the feast of the Sacred Heart of Jesus be celebrated everywhere as one of the primary feasts of the year.
                In all houses, let the first Friday of the month be remembered with a special ceremony, and let it be recommended to every confrere and young person to make a Communion of Reparation on that day.
Every confrere shall be enrolled in the association called the Practice of the Nine Offices, and truly strive to carry out the office assigned to him.
Every house should be associated with the confraternity of the Guard of Honour, and display its banner; and every confrere and young person should fix the special time at which he intends to do his guard duty, as prescribed by the said confraternity.
In the novitiate and studentate houses, those who can should observe the Holy Hour according to the established norms for practising this devotion.
Since nothing can better contribute to making the above-mentioned act of consecration profitable, and to practising devotion to the Sacred Heart well than knowing what it consists of, I have compiled and herewith set out a suitable instruction. In this way, I hope that devotion to the most sacred Heart of Jesus will be more appreciated and desired by all of us and also by our good pupils.
Intimately convinced that this solemn act which we are about to perform will be pleasing to the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus, and that it will produce great good for our Pious Society, while I say farewell to you and bless you, I ask you again to join with me in thanking this Divine Heart for the great favours which it has already bestowed upon us, and to pray that the new century, while it will be a comfort and help to us, may yet be a century of triumph for Jesus the Redeemer, so that he, our dear Jesus, may reign in the minds and hearts of all people around the world, and that the Christus vincit, Christus regnat, Christus imperat may soon resonate in the fullness of its significance.

Yours affectionately in Corde Jesu
Fr MICHAEL RUA

INSTRUCTION ON THE DEVOTION TO THE SACRED HEART OF JESUS

Jesus, our most merciful Redeemer, having come to earth to save all people, placed in his Church an invaluable wealth of goods which were meant to achieve such purpose. And yet, not satisfied with this so universal and generous provision, whenever a special need was felt, he wished to provide even more effective aids to people. To this end, many divine solemnities were instituted little by little, certainly by inspiration of the Lord. To this end, the Lord raised up many shrines in every part of the world, and to this end, many holy religious practices were instituted in the Church, according to need.

No. 22, Turin, 21 November 1900,
Feast of the Presentation of Mary in the Temple’

Wise men tell us that to understand an event, one must know what its origin is and what its purpose is.This is also the case with the now widespread phenomenon of Halloween, which rather than a holiday to celebrate is an event to reflect upon.This is to avoid celebrating a culture of death that has nothing to do with Christianity.

Halloween, as it stands today, is a holiday that has its commercial origins in the United States and has spread throughout the world over the past three decades. It is celebrated on the night between 31 October and 1 November and has some symbols of its own:
– The costumes: dressing up in scary clothes to represent fantastic characters or monstrous creatures.
– Carved pumpkins: the tradition of carving pumpkins, inserting a light inside to create jack-o’-lanterns.
– Trick-or-treating: a custom of knocking on doors of houses and asking for sweets in exchange for a promise not to trick-or-treat.

It seems to be one of the commercial festivals cultivated on purpose by some interested parties to increase their revenue. In fact, in 2023 in the US alone, $12.2 billion was spent (according to the National Retail Federation) and in the UK about £700 million (according to market analysts). These figures also explain the widespread media coverage, with real strategies to cultivate the event, turning it into a mass phenomenon and presenting it as just a casual amusement, a collective game.

Origin
If we go looking for the beginnings of Halloween – because every contingent thing has its beginning and its end – we find that it dates back to the polytheistic pagan beliefs of the Celtic world.
The ancient people of the Celts, a nomadic people who spread throughout Europe, were best able to preserve their culture, language and beliefs in the British Isles, moreover in Ireland, in the area where the Roman Empire had never arrived. One of their pagan festivals, called Samhain, was celebrated between the last days of October and early November and was the ‘new year’ that opened the annual cycle. As the length of the day decreased and the length of the night increased at that time, it was believed that the boundary between the world of the living and the world of the dead became thin, allowing the souls of the dead to return to earth (also in the form of animals) and also allowing evil spirits to enter. That is why they used frightening masks to confuse or drive away the spirits, so as not to be touched by their evil influence. The celebration was compulsory for all, began in the evening and consisted of magic rites, ritual fires, animal sacrifices and probably also human sacrifices. On those nights, their Druid priests went to every house to receive something from the people for their sacrifices, under penalty of curses.

The custom of carving a turnip in the shape of a monstrous face, placing a light inside and placing it on the doorstep of houses, in time gave rise to a legend that better explains the meaning. It is the legend of the Irish blacksmith Stingy Jack, a man who tricks the devil several times and, upon his death, is received neither in heaven nor in hell. Being in darkness and forced to look for a place for his eternal rest, he asked for and received from the devil a burning log, which he stuck inside a turnip he had with him, creating a lantern, the Jack-o’-lantern. But he found no rest and continues to wander to this day. Legend wants to symbolise the damned souls that wander the earth and find no rest. This explains the custom of placing an ugly turnip in front of the house, to instil fear and drive away any wandering souls that might approach on that night.

The Roman world also had a similar festival, called Lemuria or Lemuralia, dedicated to keeping the spirits of the dead away from homes; it was celebrated on 9, 11 and 13 May. The spirits were called ‘lemurs’ (the word ‘lemur’ comes from the Latin larva, meaning ‘ghost’ or ‘mask’). These celebrations were thought to be associated with the figure of Romulus, founder of Rome, who is said to have instituted the rites to appease the spirit of his brother Remus, whom he killed; however, it seems that the holiday was instituted in the first century AD.

This type of pagan celebration, also found in other cultures, reflects the awareness that life continues after death, even if this awareness is mixed with many errors and superstitions. The Church did not want to deny this seed of truth that, in one form or another, was in the soul of the pagans, but sought to correct it.

In the Church, the cult of martyrs has been there from the very beginning. Around the 4th century AD, the commemoration of the martyrs was celebrated on the first Sunday after Pentecost. In 609 A.D., Pope Boniface IV moved this commemoration to the feast of All Saints, on 13 May. In 732 A.D. Pope Gregory III again moved the feast of All Saints (in Old English ‘All Hallows’) to 1 November, and the preceding day became known as All Hallows’ Eve, from which the abbreviated form Halloween is derived.
The immediate proximity of the dates suggests that the shift in commemoration by the Church was due to a desire to correct ancestor worship. The last shift indicates that the Celtic pagan festival Samhain had also remained in the Christian world.

Diffusion
This pagan celebration – a primarily religious festival – preserved in the vaults of Irish culture even after the Christianisation of society, reappeared with the massive migration of the Irish to the United States following the great famine that hit the country in 1845-1846.
The immigrants, in order to preserve their cultural identity, began to celebrate various festivals of their own as times of gathering and recreation, including All Hallows. Perhaps more than a religious festival, it was a festival without religious references, linked to celebrating the abundance of harvests.
This encouraged the revival of the ancient Celtic use of the lantern, and people began to use not the turnip but the pumpkin for its larger size and softness that favoured carving.

In the first half of the 20th century, the pragmatic spirit of the Americans – seizing the opportunity to make money – extended this holiday nationwide, and Halloween costumes and apparel began to appear in the markets on an industrial scale: ghosts, skeletons, witches, vampires, zombies, etc.

After 1950, the holiday also began to spread to schools and homes. The custom of children going around knocking on houses asking for treats with the expression: ‘Trick or treat?’ appeared.

Driven by commercial interests, this led to a true national holiday with secular connotations, devoid of religious elements, which would be exported all over the world especially in the last decades.

Reflection
If we look closely, the elements found in the Celtic rites of the pagan festival Samhain have remained. These are clothes, lanterns, threats of curses.
The clothes are monstrous and frightening: ghosts, creepy clowns, witches, zombies, werewolves, vampires, heads pierced by daggers, disfigured corpses, devils.
Hideous pumpkins carved like severed heads with a macabre light inside.
Kids walking around the houses asking ‘Trick or treat?’ reminiscent of the ‘curse or sacrifice’ of Druid priests.
We first ask ourselves whether these elements can be considered worthy of cultivation. Since when have the frightening, the macabre, the dark, the horrific, the hopelessly dead defined human dignity? They are indeed outrageously outrageous.

And we wonder whether all this does not contribute to cultivating an occult, esoteric dimension, given that these are the same elements used by the dark world of witchcraft and Satanism. And whether the dark and gothic fashion, like all the other decorations of macabrely carved pumpkins, cobwebs, bats and skeletons, does not foment an approach to the occult.

Is it by chance that tragic events regularly occur in conjunction with this festival?
Is it by chance that desecrations, grave offences against the Christian religion and even sacrilege occur regularly on these days?
Is it by chance that for Satanists the main holiday, which marks the beginning of the Satanic year, is Halloween?
Does it not produce, especially for young people, a familiarisation with a magical and occult mentality, distant and contrary to Christian faith and culture, especially at this time when Christian praxis is weakened by secularisation and relativism?

Let us look at some testimonies.

An English lady, Doreen Irvine, a former Satanist priestess converted to Christianity, warns in her book From Witchcraft to Christ that the tactic used to approach occultism consists precisely in proposing the occult in attractive forms, with mysteries that incite, passing everything off as a natural, even sympathetic experience.

The founder of the Church of Satan, Anton LaVey, openly declared his joy that the baptised participate in the Halloween festival: ‘I am glad that Christian parents allow their children to worship the devil at least one night a year.Welcome to Halloween’.

Fr Aldo Buonaiuto, of the Anti-cult Service of the Pope John XXIII Community Association, in his paper, Halloween.The devil’s trick, warns us that ‘Satan’s devotees consider the “energies” of all those who, even if only for fun, are evoking the world of darkness in the perverse rites practised in his honour, throughout the month of October and in particular on the night between 31 October and 1 November, to be a gift to him’.

Fr Francesco Bamonte, exorcist and vice-president of the International Association of Exorcists (former president of the same for two consecutive terms), warns:
‘My experience, together with that of other exorcist priests, shows how  Halloween, including the period of time that prepares for it, in fact represents, for many young people, a privileged moment of contact with sectarian realities or in any case linked to the world of occultism, with even serious consequences not only on a spiritual level, but also on that of psychophysical integrity. First of all, it must be said that this feast imprints ugliness at the very least. And by imprinting ugliness on children, the taste for the horrid, the deformed, the monstrous put on the same level as the beautiful, it somehow orients them to evil and despair. In heaven, where only goodness reigns, everything is beautiful. In hell, where only hatred reigns, all is ugly.’ […]
‘On the basis of my ministry as an exorcist, I can state that Halloween is, in the calendar of magicians, occult practitioners and Satan worshippers, one of the most important ‘holidays’; Consequently, for them, it is a source of great satisfaction that the minds and hearts of so many children, adolescents, young people and not a few adults are directed towards the macabre, the demonic, witchcraft, through the representation of coffins, skulls, skeletons, vampires, ghosts, thus adhering to the mocking and sinister vision of the most important and decisive moment of a human being’s existence: the end of his earthly life. ’ […]
‘We exorcists do not tire of warning against this recurrence, which not only through immoral or dangerous conduct, but also through the lightness of entertainment considered harmless (and unfortunately hosted more and more often even in parish spaces) can both prepare the ground for a future disturbing action, even heavy, on the part of the devil, and allow the Evil One to affect and disfigure the souls of the young.’

It is young people in particular who suffer the widespread impact of the Halloween phenomenon. Without serious discernment criteria, they risk being attracted by ugliness and not beauty, by darkness and not light, by wickedness and not goodness.

We need to reflect on whether to continue celebrating the feast of darkness, Halloween, or the feast of light, All Saints…

(continuation from previous article)

The market for young workers
            The historical time in which Don Bosco lived was not one of the happiest. In the neighbourhoods of Turin, the saintly educator discovered a real “market for young workers”: the city was becoming more and more full of inhumanly exploited minors.
            Don Bosco himself remembers that the first boys he was able to approach were “stonemasons, bricklayers, plasterers, flint makers and others, who came from distant towns. They were employed everywhere, unprotected by any law.” They were “peddlers, match sellers, shoe shiners, chimney sweeps, stable boys, street sweepers, shopkeepers at the market, all poor boys living by the day.” He saw them climbing on bricklayers’ scaffolds, looking for a job as an apprentice in the shops, wandering around calling themselves chimney sweeps. He saw them playing for money on street corners: if he tried to approach them, they would turn away wary and contemptuous. They were not the boys from the Becchi, looking for tales or sleight of hand. They were the “wolves” of his dreams; they were the first effects of a revolution that would shock the world, the industrial revolution.
            They arrived by the hundreds from small towns in the city, looking for work. They found nothing but squalid places in which the whole family was crammed, without air, without light, fetid from dampness and sewers. In the factories and workshops, no hygienic measures, no regulations except those imposed by the master.
            Escape from the poverty of the countryside to the city also meant accepting poor wages or adapting to a risky standard of living in order to have something to gain. It was only in 1886 that early legislation was made, thanks also to the zeal of the artisans’ priest, which in some way regulated child labour. In the building sites under construction, Don Bosco saw “children from eight to twelve years old, far from their own country, serving the masons, spending their days up and down unsafe scaffolding, in the sun, in the wind, climbing steep ladders laden with lime, with bricks, with no other educational help than rude ramblings or beatings.”
            Don Bosco quickly drew the line. Those boys needed a school and a job that would open up a more secure future for them: they needed to be boys first and foremost, to live the exuberance of their age, without moping on the pavements and crowding the prisons. The social reality of our own times seems to resonate with that of yesterday: other immigrants, other faces knock like a river in flood at the doors of our consciences.
            Don Bosco was an educator gifted with intuition, a practical sense, reluctant towards solutions arrived at around a table, abstruse methodologies and abstract projects. The educational page is written by the saint with his life, before it was by his pen. It was the most convincing way to make an educational system credible. To deal with injustice, with the moral and material exploitation of minors, he created schools, organised trade workshops of all kinds, invented and promoted contractual initiatives to protect children, encouraged consciences with qualified proposals for job training. He responded to empty palace politics and street demonstrations with efficient reception structures, innovative social services, the object of respect and admiration even of the most ardent anticlericals of the time. And today’s story is not so different from yesterday’s; moreover, history wears the dress that its tailors make with their own hands and ideas.
            Don Bosco believed in the boy, he relied on his abilities, whether they were few or many, visible or hidden. A friend of so many street children, he knew how to read the hidden potential for goodness in their hearts. He was able to dig inside the life of each one and pull out precious resources to tailor the dress to the dignity of his young friends. A pedagogy that does not touch the essence of the person and does not know how to combine the eternal values of each creature, outside of all historical and cultural logic, runs the risk of intervening on abstract persons or only on the surface.
            The impact he made was crucial. He looked around, everywhere: he saw and created the impossible to realise his holy utopias. He came into contact with the extreme realities of juvenile delinquency. He entered prisons: he was able to look inside this scourge with courage and a priestly spirit. It was the experience that marked him deeply. He approached the city’s ills with keen and active involvement: he was aware of the so many youngsters waiting for someone to take care of them. He saw with his heart and mind their human traumas, he even cried, but he did not stop at the prison grill; he managed to shout with the strength of his heart, to those he met, that prison is not the home to be received as a gift from life, but that there is another way of living. He shouted this with concrete choices to those voices coming from the unhealthy cells, and with gestures of closeness to the multitude of boys on the streets, blinded by ignorance and frozen by people’s indifference. It was the nagging of a lifetime: to prevent so many from ending up behind bars or hanging from the gallows. It is not even conceivable that his Preventive System had no connection with this bitter and shocking youthful experience. Even if he wanted to, he could never have forgotten that last night spent next to a young man condemned to be hanged, or the escorting of condemned men to death and the fainting spell when he saw the gallows. How is it conceivable that his heart did not have a reaction, as he passed among the people, perhaps smug, perhaps pitying, and saw a young life snuffed out by human logic, which settles the score with those who have ended up in a ravine and do not bend down to reach out a hand to pull them out? The farmer of the Becchi, with a heart as big as the sand of the sea, was a hand always stretched out towards poor and abandoned youth.

Valuable legacy
            Everyone always leaves a trace of their passage on earth. Don Bosco left history with the embodiment of an educational method that is also a spirituality, the fruit of an educational wisdom experienced in daily toil, alongside the young. Much has been written about this precious inheritance!
            The educational field today is as complex as ever, because it moves in a disjointed cultural fabric. There is a very wide methodological pluralism of operational interventions, both socially and politically.
            The educator is faced with situations that are difficult to decipher and often contradictory, with models that are sometimes permissive, sometimes authoritarian. What is to be done? Woe to the uncertain educator, held back by doubt! Those who educate cannot live undecided and perplexed, wavering one or other way. Educating in a fragmented society is not easy. With a large class of marginalised people divided into so many fragments it is not easy to shed light; subjectivity, the self-interest, the tendency to take refuge in ephemeral and transitory ideals prevails. From the years when the tendency towards active involvement prevailed, we have moved on to rejection of or disinterest in public life, in politics: little participation, little desire for involvement.
            In addition to the absence of a centre providing stable points of reference, there is the absence of a foundation of certainties, giving young people the will to live and the love of service for others.
            And yet, in this world of provisional hegemonies, lacking a unified culture, with heterogeneous and isolated elements, new needs emerge: a better quality of life, more constructive human relations, the affirmation of solidarity centred on voluntary work. Needs for new open spaces for dialogue and encounter emerge: young people decide how, where and what to say to each other.
            In the age of bioethics, of remote control, of the search for beautiful and simple things of the earth, we are looking for a new face for pedagogy. It is the pedagogy that dresses itself in welcome, in availability, in the spirit of family that generates trust, joy, optimism, sympathy, that opens propositional horizons of hope, that searches for the means and ways to work the newness of life. It is the pedagogy of the human heart, the most precious inheritance that Don Bosco left to society.
            On this fabric, open and sensitive to prevention, a better future for today’s disturbed children must be built with courage and will. It is always possible to make Don Bosco’s pedagogical intervention present, because it is founded on the natural essence of every human being. These are the criteria of reason, religion and loving-kindness: the threefold approach on which so many young people have been formed “as upright citizens and good Christians”.
            It is not a method of study, we repeat, but a way of life, the adherence to a spirit, which contains values that come from the human being created in the image and likeness of the Creator. Extraordinary predilection for the young, profound respect for them as individuals and their freedom, the concern to combine material needs with those of the spirit, the patience to live the rhythms of growth or change in the child as an active, not passive, subject of every educational process, are the sum total of this “valuable legacy”.
            And there is another aspect. There is an open account with society: the young people of the future demand a “universal” Don Bosco, beyond the margins of his apostolic family. How many of our youngsters have never heard of Don Bosco!
            There is an urgent need to re-launch his message, which is still alive: to disregard this natural process of re-actualisation, one also runs the risk of killing off the positive signs found in today’s culture, which, albeit with different sensitivities and opposing goals and motivations, has at heart the human promotion of the child.
            Don Bosco’s pedagogy, before being translated into reflective documents, into systematic writings took on the face of the very many young people he educated. Every page of his educational system has a name, a fact, an achievement, perhaps even failures. The secret of his holiness? The young people! “For you I study, for you I work, for you I am willing to give my life.”
            To young people without love, Don Bosco gave love back. To young people without a family, because it did not exist or was physically and spiritually distant from them, Don Bosco sought to build or rebuild the family atmosphere and environment. A man endowed with a profound willingness to improve through continuous change, Don Bosco allowed himself to be guided by the certainty that all young people, practically speaking, could become better. The seed of goodness, the possibility of success was in every young person; all that was needed was to find the way: “He took to heart the fate of thousands of little vagabonds, thieves because of abandonment or misery, starving and homeless boys and girls.”
            Those whom society put on the margins, were in first place for Don Bosco; they were the object of his faith. The youngsters rejected by society even represented his glory; it was the challenge at a time in history when the attention and educational care from society and organisations was directed towards good children, in fact as much as possible.
            Don Bosco sensed the power of the educator’s love. He was not at all concerned with adapting and conforming to the systems, methods and pedagogical concepts in use at his time. He was an open enemy of an education that emphasised authority above all, that preached a cold and detached relationship between educators and pupils. Violence punished the bad ones momentarily, but did not cure the bad ones. And so he did not accept and never allowed punishment just to give an “example”, which was supposed to have a preventive effect, instilling fear, anxiety and anguish.
            He understood that no education was possible without winning the youngster’s heart; his was an educational method that led to consent, to the youngster’s participation. He was convinced that no pedagogical endeavour would bear fruit until it had its foundation in the readiness to listen.
            There is one characteristic that concerns the sphere in which education takes place and is typical of Don Bosco’s pedagogy: the creation and preservation of “joyfulness” whereby every day becomes a celebration. It was a cheerfulness that only exists, and it could not be otherwise, by virtue of creative activity, which excludes all boredom, all sense of ennui at not knowing how to occupy time. In this area Don Bosco possessed an inventiveness and skill that allowed him, with extraordinary ability, not only to entertain, but to draw young people to him through games, recitations, songs, walks: the sphere of cheerfulness represented an obligatory passage for his pedagogy.
            Young people, of course, have to discover where their error lies, and for this they need the educator’s help, including through disapproval, but this need not at all be accompanied by violence. Disapproval is an appeal to conscience. The educator must be the guide to values, not to his or her own person. In educational intervention, an excessively strong bond of the pupil to the educator can threaten the favourable effect of the educator’s educational activity; a myth, generated by emotionalism, can easily arise to the point of making an absolutised ideal. Young people must not be willing to do our will: they must learn to do what is right and meaningful for their human and existential growth. The educator works for the future, but he cannot work on the future; he must accept, therefore, to be continually exposed to the revision of his work, of his methodologies and above all he must be continually concerned to discover more and more deeply the reality of the one being educated, in order to intervene at the right moment.
            Don Bosco used to say: “it is not enough for the first circle, that is the family, to be healthy, it is also necessary for the inevitable second circle, which is formed by the child’s friends, to be healthy. Start by telling him that there is a big difference between companions and friends. Companions he cannot choose; he finds them in the school desk and in the workplace or at gatherings. Friends, on the other hand, he can and must choose…. Do not hinder the natural vivacity of the child and do not call him bad because he does not stand still.”
            But this is not enough; play and motion may occupy a good part, but not all of the child’s life. The heart needs its own nourishment, it needs to love.
             “One day, after a series of considerations on Don Bosco, I invited the boys at our centre to express with a drawing, with a word, with a gesture the image they had made of the Saint.
            Some reproduced the figure of the priest surrounded by boys. Another drew a set of prison bars: a boy’s face was sketched on the inside, while from the outside a hand tried to force a bolt. Yet another, after a long silence, sketched two hands clasping. A third drew hearts in a variety of shapes and in the centre a half-bust of Don Bosco, with lots and lots of hands touching these hearts. The last one wrote a single word: father! Most of these boys don’t know Don Bosco.”
             “I had long dreamed of accompanying them to Turin: circumstances had not always been favourable to us. And after several unsuccessful attempts, we had managed to put together a group of eight boys, all with criminal convictions. Two boys had been allowed out of prison for four days, three were under house arrest, the others were subject to various prescriptions.
            “I wish I had an artist’s pen to describe the emotions I read in their eyes as they listened to the story of their peers helped by Don Bosco. They wandered around those blessed places as if reliving their stories. In the Saint’s rooms they followed the Holy Mass with moving recollection. I see them tired, leaning their heads against Don Bosco’s casket, staring at his body, whispering prayers. What they said, what Don Bosco said to those boys I will never know. With them I enjoyed the joy of my own vocation.”
            In Don Bosco we find a supreme wisdom in focusing on the concrete life of every boy or young man he met: their life became his life, their sufferings became his sufferings. He would not rest until he had helped them. The boys who came into contact with Don Bosco felt they were his friends, they felt he was at their side, they perceived his presence, they tasted his affection. This made them safe, less alone: for those who live on the margins, this is the greatest support they can receive.
            In a primary school handbook, yellowed and worn by the years, I read a few sentences, written in ink, at the bottom of the story of the Becchi juggler. Whoever had written them was the first time he had heard of John Bosco: “Only God, his Word, is the immortal rule and guide for our behaviour and actions. God is there despite the wars. The earth despite the hatred continues to give us bread to live on.”

            Fr Alfonso Alfano, sdb

Following the paths of the heart
            Don Bosco wept at the sight of the boys who ended up in prison. Yesterday, as is the case today too, evil’s timetable is relentless: fortunately, so is the schedule for good. And even more so. I feel that yesterday’s roots are the same as today’s. Like yesterday, others today find a home on the streets and in prisons. I believe that the memory of the priest for so many boys without a parish is the irreplaceable thermometer for measuring the temperature of our educational intervention.
            Don Bosco lived at a time of striking social poverty. We were at the beginning of the process of large groups of youths coming together in the great industrial metropolises. The police authorities themselves denounced this danger: there were so many “young children brought up without principles of Religion, Honour and Humanity, who were ending up rotting totally in hatred”, we read in the chronicles of the time. It was the growing poverty that drove a great multitude of adults and young people to live by expediency, and in particular by theft and from alms-giving.
            The urban decay caused social tensions to explode, which went hand in hand with political tensions; disorderly boys and misguided youth, towards the middle of the 19th century, drew public attention, shaking governmental sensibilities.
            Added to the social phenomenon was a clear lack of education. The breakdown of the family caused concern above all in the Church; the prevalence of the repressive system was at the root of growing youthful unease and it affected the relationship between parents and children, educators and those being educated. Don Bosco had to confront a system made up of “bad traits”, proposing loving kindness instead.
            The life of so many parents lived on the borders of illegality, the need to procure the necessities for survival, would lead a multitude of youngsters to be uprooted from their families, and to leave the place they lived in. The city became more and more crowded with boys and young adults on the hunt for a job; for many who come from afar there was also a lack of a corner to sleep in.
            It as not uncommon to meet a lady, such as Maria G., begging, using children artfully placed at strategic points in the city or in front of church doors; often, parents themselves entrusted their children to beggars, who used them to arouse the pity of others and receive more money. It sounds like a photocopy of a tried and tested system in a large southern city: the renting out of other people’s children, so the passer-by would take pity and begging become more profitable.
            However, theft was the real source of income: it was a phenomenon that grew and became unstoppable in 19th century Turin. On 2 February 1845, nine young urchins aged between eleven and fourteen appeared before the police commissioner of the Vicariate, accused of having robbed a bookseller’s shop of numerous volumes … and various stationery items, using a picklock. The new breed of borsajuoli’attracted constant complaints from the people. They were almost always abandoned children, without parents, relatives or means of subsistence, very poor, chased away and abandoned by everyone, who ended up stealing.
            The picture of juvenile deviance was impressive: delinquency and the state of abandonment of so many boys was spreading like wildfire. The growing number of “rascals”, “reckless purse-snatchers” in the streets and squares was however only one aspect of a widespread situation. The fragility of the family, strong economic malaise, the constant and strong immigration from the countryside to the city, fuelled a precarious situation which the political forces felt powerless to tackle. The malaise grew as crime organised itself and penetrated public structures. The first manifestations of violence by organised gangs began, acting with sudden and repeated acts of intimidation designed to create a climate of social, political and religious tension.
            This was expressed by the gangs known as the cocche, which spread in various numbers, taking different names from the neighbourhoods where they were based. Their sole purpose was “to disturb passers-by, mistreat them if they complained, commit obscene acts on women, and attack some isolated soldier or provost.” In reality, it was not a question of criminal associations, but more of gangs formed not only by people born in Turin, but also by immigrants: young people aged between sixteen and thirty who used to gather in spontaneous meetings, especially in the evening hours, giving vent to their tensions and frustrations of the day. It was in this situation in the mid 19th century that Don Bosco’s activities were inserted. It was not the poor boys, friends and childhood companions of his place at the Becchi in Castelnuovo, not the valiant young men of Chieri, but “the wolves, the squabblers, the unruly types” of his dreams.
            It is in this world of political conflict, in this vineyard, where the sowing of darnel is abundant, among this market of young arms hired out for depravity, among these youngsters without love and malnourished in body and soul, that Don Bosco was called to work. The young priest listened, went out into the streets: he saw, was moved, but, as practical as he was, he rolled up his sleeves; those boys needed a school, education, catechism, training for work. There was no time to waste. They were young: they needed to give meaning to their lives, they had a right to have time and means to study, to learn a trade, but also time and space to be happy, to play.

Go, look around!
            Sedentary by profession or by choice, computerised in thought and action, we risk losing the originality of “being”, of sharing, of growing “together”.
Don Bosco did not live in the era of test-tube preparations: he left humanity the pedagogy of ‘companionship’, the spiritual and physical pleasure of living next to a youngster, small among the small, poor among the poor, fragile among the fragile.
            A priest friend and spiritual guide of his, Fr Cafasso, knew Don Bosco, knew his zeal for souls, sensed his passion for this multitude of boys; he urged him to go out into the streets. “Go, look around.” From the first Sundays, the priest from the countryside, the priest who had not known his father, went out to see the misery of the town’s suburbs. He was shocked. “He met a large number of young people of all ages,” testified his successor, Fr Rua, “who were wandering around the streets and squares, especially in the outskirts of the town, playing, brawling, swearing and even doing worse.“
            He entered building sites, talked to workers, contacted employers; he felt emotions that would mark him for the rest of his life when he met these boys. And sometimes he found these poor “bricklayers” lying on the floor in a corner of a church, tired, asleep, unable to tune into meaningless sermons about their vagabond lives. Perhaps that was the only place where they could find some warmth, after a day of toil, before venturing off in search of somewhere to spend the night. He went into the shops, wandered around the markets, visited the street corners where there were many boys begging. Everywhere, badly dressed and undernourished boys; he witnessed scenes of malpractice and transgressions: all carried out by boys.
            After a few years, he moved from the streets to the prisons. “For a full twenty years I assiduously visited Turin’s city prisons. I continued
my visits later, though not as regularly. …”. (BM XV, 600)
            How many misunderstandings at the beginning! How many insults! A “cassock” was out of tune in that place, frowned upon. He approached those abid and distrustful “wolves”; he listened to their stories, but above all he made their suffering his own.
            He understood the drama of those boys: clever exploiters had pushed them into those cells. And he became their friend. His simple and humane manner restored dignity and respect to each of them.
            Something had to be done and soon; a different system had to be invented, to stand by those who had gone astray. “Whenever he had the time, he would spend entire days in the prisons and several times he conducted spiritual retreats there. He regularly visited the inmates on Saturdays, his pockets bulging with tobacco or bread. He was especially interested in the juveniles whom misfortune had brought there. … By helping and befriending them, he sought to draw them to the festive oratory after their release from prison.” (MB II, 136-137)
            In the “Generala”, a House of Correction opened in Turin on 12 April 1845, as stated in the regulations of the Penal House, “young people condemned to a correctional sentence for having acted without discernment in committing the crime and young people supported in prison by paternal love” were “gathered and governed by the method of working together, in silence and segregated by night in special cells.” This was the context for the extraordinary excursion to Stupinigi organised by Don Bosco alone, with the consent of the Minister of the Interior, Urban Rattazzi, without guards, based only on mutual trust, a commitment of conscience and the fascination of the educator. He wanted to know the “reason why the State does not have the influence” of the priest over these young people. “The force we have is a moral force: unlike the State, which knows only how to command and punish, we speak primarily to the heart of the youth, and our word is the word of God.”
            Knowing the system of life adopted inside the Generala, the challenge thrown down by the young Piedmontese priest took on incredible value: to ask for a “Free Release” day for all those young inmates. It was madness yet such was Don Bosco’s request. He obtained permission in the spring of 1855. The whole thing was organised by Don Bosco alone, with the help of the boys themselves. The consent he received from Minister Rattazzi was certainly a sign of esteem for and trust in the young priest. The experience of leading boys out of that House of Correction in complete freedom and managing to bring them all back to prison, despite what ordinarily took place inside the prison structure, was extraordinary. It was the triumph of an appeal to trust and conscience, the testing of an idea, an experience, that would guide him throughout his life to rely on the resources hidden in the hearts of so many young people doomed to irreversible marginalisation.

Onward, and in shirt sleeves
            Even today, in a different cultural and social context, Don Bosco’s grasp of things is not all all outdated, but still works. Especially surprising, in the dynamics of rehabilitating children and young people who have entered the penal circuit, is the inventive spirit in creating concrete job opportunities for them.
            Today we encounter problems offering employment opportunities for our minors at risk. Those who work in the social sector know how hard it is to overcome bureaucratic mechanisms and gears in order to realise, for example, simple work grants for minors. Don Bosco used agile approaches and structures, having boys “fostered” by employers, under the educational tutelage of a guarantor.
            The first years of Don Bosco’s priestly and apostolic life were marked by a continuous search for the right way to take boys and young men away from the dangers of the street. The plans were clear in his mind, as ingrained in his mind and soul was his educational method. “Not with blows but by gentleness”. He was also convinced that it was no easy feat to turn wolves into lambs. But he had Divine Providence on his side.
            And when faced with immediate problems, he never backed down. He was not the type to enter into discussion about the sociological condition of minors, nor was he the priest for political or formal compromises; he was saintly stubborn in his good intentions, but was strongly tenacious and concrete in realising them. He had great zeal for the salvation of youth and there were no obstacles that could restrain this holy passion, which marked every step and punctuated every hour of his day.
             “In the prisons he saw a great number of boys, ranging between twelve and eighteen years of age, [basically] healthy, sturdy and intelligent. He was horrified to see them inactive, bitten by insects, hungry for both spiritual and material food while they served time, expiating through detention, and even more through remorse, their precocious depravity. They were a blot on their country, the dishonor of their families, an infamy to themselves. They were above all, souls that, redeemed by the blood of Christ, were now reduced to slaves of vice, and in the greatest danger of eternal perdition.Who knows, if these boys had had a friend who had taken loving care of them by helping them and by giving them religious instruction on holy days, perhaps they would have avoided coming and returning to these prisons. Certainly, the number of these young prisoners would be diminished.” (MB II, 49-50)
            He rolled up his sleeves and gave himself body and soul to the prevention of these evils; he gave all his contribution, his experience, but above all his insights in launching his own initiatives or those of other associations. It was the release from prison that worried both the government and private “societies”. It was precisely in 1846 that an associative structure authorised by the government was set up, which resembled, at least in its intentions and in some ways, what is happening today in the Italian juvenile penal system. It was called the “Royal Society for the Patronage of Young People Released from the House of Correctional Education”. Its purpose was to support young people released from the Generala.
            A careful reading of the Statutes brings us back to some of the penal measures that are nowadays provided for as alternative measures to prison.
            The Members of the Society were divided into “operatives”, who took on the office of guardians, “paying members”, and “paying operatives”. Don Bosco was an “operative member”. Don Bosco accepted several, but with discouraging results. Perhaps it was these failures that made him decide to ask the authorities to send the boys to him before they ended up like that.
            It is not important here to deal with the relationship between Don Bosco, the houses of correction and collateral services, but rather to recall the attention the Saint paid to this group of minors. Don Bosco knew the hearts of the young men of the Generala, but above all he had more in mind than remaining indifferent to the moral and human degradation of those poor and unfortunate inmates. He continued his mission: he did not abandon them: “Ever since the Government opened that Penitentiary, and entrusted its direction to the Society of St Peter in Chains, Don Bosco was able to go from time to time among those poor youngsters […]. With the permission of the Director of the prisons he instructed them in catechism, preached to them, heard their confessions, and many times entertained them amicably in recreation, as he did with his boys at the Oratory” (BS 1882, n. 11 p. 180).
            Don Bosco’s interest in young people in difficulty was focused over time in the Oratory, a true expression of a preventive and recuperative pedagogy, being an open and multifunctional social service. Don Bosco had direct contact with quarrelsome, violent youth bordering on delinquency around 1846-50. These are the encounters with the cocche, gangs or neighbourhood groups in ongoing conflict. The story is told of a fourteen-year-old boy, son of a drunkard and anticlerical father who, having happened to be in the Oratory in 1846, threw himself headlong into the various recreational activities, but refused to attend religious services, because according to his father’s teachings, he did not want to become a “mouldy old cretin”. Don Bosco attracted him with his tolerance and patience, which made him change his behaviour in a short time.
            Don Bosco was also interested in taking on the management of re-educational and correctional institutions. Proposals in this sense had come from various quarters. There were attempts and contacts, but drafts and proposals for agreements came to nothing. All this is sufficient to show how much Don Bosco had the problem discarded children at heart. And if there was resistance, it always came from the difficulty of using the preventive system. Wherever he found a “mixture” of the repressive and preventive system, he was categorical in his refusal, as he was also clear in his rejection of any group or structure that brought back to the idea of the “reformatory”. A careful reading of these attempts reveals the fact that Don Bosco never refused to help the boy in difficulty, but he was against the management of institutes, houses of correction or directing works with an obvious educational compromise.
            The conversation that took place between Don Bosco and Crispi in Rome in February 1878 is very interesting. Crispi asked Don Bosco for news about the progress of his work and in particular spoke about the educational systems. He lamented the unrest that was taking place in the correctional prisons. It was a conversation in which the Minister was fascinated by Don Bosco’s analysis; he asked him not only for advice but also for a programme for these houses of correction (MB XIII, 483).
            Don Bosco’s replies and proposals found sympathy, but not willingness: the rift between the religious and political worlds was strong. Don Bosco expressed his opinion, indicating various categories of boys: the unruly, dissipated and good. For the saintly educator there was hope of success for all, even for the unruly, as he then used to refer to what we nowadays call at-risk boys.
            “Let them not become worse.” “…In time let the good principles acquired produce their effect later … many will come to their senses.” This is an explicit answer and perhaps the most interesting.
            After mentioning the distinction between the two educational systems, he determined which children must be considered to be in danger: those who go to other cities or towns in search of work, those whose parents cannot or do not want to take care of them, vagabonds who fall into the hands of the public security’. He points out the necessary and possible measures: “Weekend recreations areas, care of those placed at work hospices and preservation houses with arts and crafts and with agricultural colonies.”
            It proposes not direct government management of educational institutions, but adequate support in buildings, equipment and financial grants, and presents a version of the Preventive System that retains the essential elements, without the explicit religious reference. Besides a pedagogy of the heart could not have ignored the social, psychological and religious problems.
            Don Bosco ascribes their misguidance to the absence of God, to the uncertainty of moral principles, to the corruption of the heart, to the clouding of the mind, to the incapacity and carelessness of adults, especially parents, to the corrosive influence of society and to the intentional negative action of “bad companions” or the lack of responsibility of educators.
            Don Bosco played a lot on the positive: the will to live, the fondness for work, the rediscovery of joy, social solidarity, family spirit, healthy fun.

(continued)

            don Alfonso Alfano, sdb

Child labour is not a reality of the past, unfortunately. There are still around 160 million children working in the world, and almost half of them are employed in various forms of hazardous work; some of them start working at the age of 5! This keeps them away from education and has serious negative consequences on their cognitive, volitional, emotional and social development, affecting their health and quality of life.

Before discussing child labour, it must be recognised that not all work performed by children can be classified as such. The involvement of children in certain family, school or social activities that do not hinder their schooling not only does not harm their health and development, but is beneficial. Such activities are part of integral education, help children learn skills that are very useful in their lives and prepare them for responsibilities.

The International Labour Organisation’s definition of child labour is work activity that deprives children of their childhood, their potential and their dignity and is harmful to their physical and psychological development. These are jobs in the streets, in factories, in mines, with long working hours that many times deprive them of even the necessary rest. These are jobs that physically, mentally, socially or morally are risky or harmful to children, and that interfere with their schooling by depriving them of the opportunity to go to school, forcing them to leave school early or forcing them to try to reconcile school attendance with long hours of hard work.
This definition of child labour is not shared by all countries. However, there are parameters that can define it: age, the difficulty or danger of the work, the number of hours worked, the conditions in which the work is performed and also the level of development of the country. As for age, it is commonly accepted that someone should under the age of 12 should not be working: international standards speak of a minimum age for admission to work, i.e. not less than the age at which one finishes compulsory schooling.

Recent statistics speak of around 160 million children working, and this figure in reality may be considerably higher, as it is difficult to calculate the actual situation. Concretely, one out of every 10 children in the world is a victim of child labour. And one must bear in mind that this statistic also includes degrading work – if one can call it work – such as forced recruitment in armed conflicts, slavery or sexual exploitation. And it is worrying that the statistics show that there are 8 million more children working today than in 2016, and that this increase is mostly found in children between the ages of 5 and 11. International organisations warn that if the trend continues like this, the number of children employed in child labour could increase by 46 million in the coming years if adequate social protection measures are not taken.

The cause of child labour is mainly poverty, but so are lack of access to education and vulnerability in the case of orphaned or abandoned children.
This work in the vast majority of cases also entails physical consequences (chronic illnesses and diseases, mutilation), psychological consequences (from being abused, boys become abusers; after living in hostile and violent environments they themselves become hostile and violent, they develop low self-esteem and a lack of hope for the future) and social consequences (corruption of customs, alcohol, drugs, prostitution, offences).

This is not a new phenomenon, it also happened in Don Bosco’s time when many boys, driven by poverty, sought expedients for survival in the big cities. The saint’s response was to take them in, provide them with food and shelter, literacy, education, a worthy job and make those abandoned boys feel that they were part of a family.
Even today, these boys show great insecurity and distrust, they are malnourished and have serious emotional deficiencies. Today, too, we must seek them out, meet them, gradually offering them what they love in order to finally give them what they need: a home, an education, a family environment and in the future a worthy job.
An attempt is made to get to know the particular situation of each one of them, to seek out family members in order to reintegrate the boys into the family when possible, to give them the opportunity to leave child labour, to socialise, to attend school, accompanying them so that they can realise their dream and life project thanks to education, and to become witnesses for other boys who find themselves in the same situation as them.

In 70 countries around the world, Salesians are active in the field of child labour. We present one of them, that of the Dominican Republic.

Canillitas was the name given to boys who were street vendors of newspapers, who due to poverty had trousers that remained short, leaving their canillas, or legs, uncovered. Similar to these, today’s boys have to move their legs in the street every day to earn a living, so the project for them was called Canillitas con Don Bosco.
It started as a Salesian oratory project, which then became a permanent activity: the Canillitas con Don Bosco Centre in Santo Domingo.

The project started on 8 December 1985 with three young people from the Salesian environment who dedicated themselves full-time, giving up their other work. They were clear about the four stages to follow: Search, Reception, Socialisation and Accompaniment. They started looking for young people on the streets and in the parks of Santo Domingo, contacting them, gaining their trust and establishing bonds of friendship. After two months, they invited them to spend a Sunday together and were surprised when more than 300 youngsters showed up at the meeting. It was a festive afternoon with games, music and snacks that prompted the children to spontaneously ask when they could return. The answer could only be: “next Sunday”.
Their numbers grew steadily, after they realised that the welcome, the spaces and the activities were just right for them. The camp organised in the summer was attended by about a hundred of the most faithful. Here the boys received a canillitas card in the camp, to give them an identity and a sense of belonging, also because many of them did not even know their date of birth.
With the growth in numbers of the boys came the growth in expenses. This led to the need to seek funding and implicitly to make the project known to these boys.

On 2 May 1986, the Salesian community presented the project to the Salesian superiors of the Salesian Province of the Antilles, a project that received unanimous support. Thus, the Canillitas con Don Bosco programme was officially launched and continues today after almost 38 years of existence. And it not only continues but has grown and expanded, being a model for other initiatives. This is how the Canillitas con Laura Vicuña programme was born, developed by the Daughters of Mary Help of Christians for working girls, the Chiriperos con Don Bosco programmes, to help young people who, to earn a living, did any little job (such as carrying water, throwing away rubbish, running errands…), and the Apprentices with Don Bosco programme, which takes care of minors who worked in the many machine shops, exploited by certain entrepreneurs. For the latter, the Salesians built a workshop with the help of some good industrialists and the First Lady of the Republic, so that they would be free to learn a trade and not be at the mercy of injustice.
As a result of this success, all these initiatives and others have merged into the Network of Boys and Girls with Don Bosco, currently composed of 11 centres with programmes adapted to the age groups of the children, which have become an example in the fight against child labour in the Caribbean country. The following are part of this network: Canillitas con Don Bosco, Chiriperos con Don Bosco, Aprendices con Don Bosco, Hogar Escuela de Niñas Doña Chucha, Hogar de Niñas Nuestra Señora de la Altagracia, Hogar Escuela Santo Domingo Savio, Quédate con Nosotros, Don Bosco Amigo, Amigos y Amigas de Domingo Savio, Mano a Mano con Don Bosco and Sur Joven.
The network has carried out programmes focused on developing skills in children and young people, fostering their integral formation and growth. It has directly accompanied some 93,000 children, adolescents and young people, reached more than 70,000 families, and indirectly had more than 150,000 beneficiaries, working with an average of more than 2,500 beneficiaries each year. All this has been achieved on the basis of Don Bosco’s Preventive System, which has led boys and young men to recover their self-esteem, to be protagonists of their own lives in order to become “upright citizens and good Christians”.

This work has also had a socio-political impact. It contributed to the growth of social sensitivity towards these poor boys who did what they could to survive. The echo of the Salesian programme in the media of the Dominican Republic gave a group of Canillitas the opportunity to participate in a session of the country’s National Congress and in the drafting of the Code of the System of Protection and Fundamental Rights of Children and Adolescents of the Dominican Republic (Law 136-03), promulgated on 7 August 2003.
Subsequently, several agreements were signed with the Professional Technical Training Institute, the National Council for Children and Adolescents, and the School of the Magistracy.
Thanks to the support of many businesspeople and civil society, partnerships and interrelationships were established with UNICEF, the International Labour Organisation, the national government, the Coalition of NGOs for Children of the Dominican Republic, and even made it to the Conference of the Americas at the White House in 2007, with a reception by President George Bush and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice.

Salesian work has contributed to the reduction of child labour and the increase of education rates in the country. The Salesian missionary promoter, Fr Juan Linares, was named the Dominican Republic’s Man of the Year in 2011, and for 10 years was a member of the board of directors of the National Council for Children and Adolescents, the governing body of the National System for the Protection of the Rights of Children and Adolescents.

Recently, a documentary, Canillitas, was made to inform, denounce and raise awareness about child labour. The short documentary reflects the daily life of six child workers in the Dominican Republic, as well as the work of Salesian missionaries to change this reality, thanks to education.

We present the film’s fact sheet.

Title: Canillitas
Year of production: 2022
Running time: 21 minutes
Genre: Documentary
Suitable audience: Everyone
Country: Spain
Director: Raúl de la Fuente, 2014 Goya Award for “Minerita” and in 2019 for “Un día más con vida”
Production: Kanaki Films
Versions and subtitles: Spanish, English, French, Italian, Portuguese, German and Polish

Online version:

(Article written with material sent by Missiones Salesianas in Madrid, Spain)

A curious episode
            In the life of Francis de Sales, a young student in Paris, there is a curious episode that had great repercussions throughout the rest of his life and in his thinking. It was Carnevale day (Carnival). While everyone was thinking about having fun, the 17-year-old seemed preoccupied, even sad. Not knowing whether he was ill or simply melancholic, his tutor suggested he go to see the festival performances. Faced with this suggestion, the young man suddenly formulated this biblical prayer: “Turn away my eyes from seeing vain things”. Then he added: “Lord, let me see”. See what? He replied: “Sacred theology; it is this that will teach me what God wants my soul to learn.”

            Until then Francis had studied the pagan authors of antiquity with great profit and even success. He liked them and was very successful in his studies. However, his heart was unsatisfied, he was looking for something or rather someone who could satisfy his desire. With the permission of his tutor, he began at that time to attend lectures given by the great professor of Sacred Scripture, Gilbert Genebrard, who was commenting on a book of the Bible that tells the love story of two lovers: the Song of Songs.

            The love described in this book is the love between a man and a woman. However, the love celebrated in the Song of Songs can also be understood as the spiritual love of the human soul with God, Genebrard explained to his students, and it is this entirely spiritual interpretation that enchanted the young student, who rejoiced in the words of the bride: “I have found Him whom my heart loves.”

            The Song of Songs became the favourite book of St Francis de Sales from then on. According to Father Lajeunie, the future Doctor of the Church had found in this holy book “the inspiration of his life, the theme of his masterpiece (the Treatise on the Love of God), and the best source of his optimism.” For Francis, Father Ravier also assures us, it was like a revelation, and from then on “he could no longer conceive of the spiritual life other than as a love story, the most beautiful of love stories.”

            No wonder, then, that Francis de Sales has become the “doctor of love” and that the theme of love has been the focus of the commemoration marking the fourth centenary of his death (1622-2022). Already in 1967, on the occasion of the fourth centenary of his birth, St Paul VI had described him as a “doctor of divine love and evangelical gentleness”. Fifty-five years later, on the anniversary of Francis de Sales’ birth to heaven, Pope Francis, with his Apostolic Letter Totum Amoris Est, offers us new insights into the life and doctrine of the holy bishop and authoritatively re-proposes to us the true face of God often ignored or misunderstood.

The misunderstood God
            In the time of Francis de Sales, King Henry IV of France, a great admirer of the abilities and virtues of the bishop of Geneva, one day regretted with him the distorted image his contemporaries had of God. According to a witness, the king “saw several of his subjects experiencing all kinds of freedoms, saying that the goodness and greatness of God did not closely care for the deeds of men, which he was strongly critical of. He saw others, in great numbers, who had a low opinion of God, believing that he was always ready to surprise them, waiting only for the hour when they had fallen into some slight fault to condemn them eternally, which he did not approve of.”

            Francis de Sales, for his part, was well aware that he was offering an image of God different from those very common in his day. In one of his sermons, he likened himself to the Apostle Paul as he announced the unknown God to the Athenians: “It is not that I want to speak to you about an unknown God” he pointed out, “since, thanks to his goodness, we know him, but I could certainly speak of a misunderstood God. I, therefore, will not make you know, but discover, that so lovable God who died for us.”

            The God of St Francis de Sales is not a policeman God nor a distant God, as many of his time believed him to be, and he is not the God of “predestination”, who has always predestined some to heaven and others to hell, as many of his contemporaries claimed, but a God who wants the salvation of all. He is not a distant, solitary and indifferent God, but a God who is provident and “ready for communication”, a God who is attractive like the Bridegroom in the Song of Songs to whom the bride addresses these words: ‘Pleasing is the fragrance of your perfumes…Take me away with you—let us hurry!”

            If God attracts man, it is so that man becomes a co-operator with God. This God respects man’s freedom and capacity for initiative, as Pope Francis reminds us. With a God with a loving face like the one proposed by Francis de Sales, communication becomes a “heart to heart”, the aim of which is union with him. It is a friendship, because friendship is communication of goods, exchange and reciprocity.

The God of the human heart
            In the Old Testament, God is called God of Abraham, God of Isaac, God of Jacob. The covenant established by God with the patriarchs truly signifies the deep, unbreakable bond between the Lord and his people. In the New Testament, the covenant established in Jesus Christ unites all men, all humanity. Henceforth, everyone can invoke God with this prayer of St Francis de Sales: “O my God, you are my God, the God of my heart, the God of my soul, the God of my spirit.”

            These expressions mean that for St Francis de Sales, our God is not only the God of the human heart in the person of the God made man, but also the God of the human heart. True, the Son of Mary receiving from her his humanity, received a human heart, both strong and gentle. But by the expression “God of the human heart”, the doctor of love means that the face of our God corresponds to the desires, the deepest expectations of the human heart. Man finds in the heart of Jesus the unexpected fulfilment of a love he dared not even think or imagine.

            The young Francis felt this when he discovered the love story delivered in the Song of Songs. The bride and the Bridegroom, the human soul and Jesus discover themselves made for each other. It is not possible that their meeting was accidental. God made them for each other in such a way that the bride can say: “You are mine and I am yours”. All that St Francis de Sales said and wrote vibrates with this wonderful story of mutual belonging.

            In Psalm 72, St Francis de Sales read these words that struck him: “God is the strength of my heart and my portion for ever.” He liked the expression “God of my heart” very much. According to the doctor of love, “if man thinks with a little attention of the divinity, he immediately feels some sweet emotion in his heart, which proves that God is the God of the human heart.” To St Joan de Chantal, with whom he founded the order of the Visitation, he recommended saying often: “You are the God of my heart and the inheritance I desire eternally.”

            If we have unruly affections or if our affections in this world are too strong, even if they are good and legitimate, we need to cut them off in order to be able to say to Our Lord like David: “The Lord is my chosen portion and my cup; you hold my lot.” For it is for this intention that Our Lord comes to us, that we may all be in him and for him.

            The heart of Jesus is the place of true rest. It is the dwelling place “most spacious and dearest to my heart”, confided St Francis de Sales, who made this intention: “I will establish my dwelling place in the furnace of love, in the divine heart pierced for me. At this burning hearth, I shall feel the flame of love, hitherto so languid, revive in the midst of my bowels. Ah! Lord, your heart is the true Jerusalem; allow me to choose it forever as the place of my rest.”

            No wonder, then, that the treasures of the Heart of Jesus were revealed to a spiritual daughter of St Francis de Sales, Margaret Mary Alacoque, the religious of the Visitation of Paray-le-Monial. Jesus said to her: “Behold this Heart that so loved men, to the point of consuming itself entirely for them.”

            Two centuries later, St Francis de Sales, his disciple and imitator, Don Bosco, said that “education is a thing of the heart”: all work starts here, and if the heart is not there, the work is difficult and the outcome is uncertain. He also said: “May young people not only be loved, but may they themselves know that they are loved.” Loved by God and by their educators. It is from this assumption that Don Bosco passed on to the Salesian Family, that Salesian educational activity begins.

He was one of the many young migrants in 19th century Turin. He had the good fortune to meet Don Bosco early on and became his first “true” lay Salesian.

            Don Bosco, a very young priest, had arrived in Turin in November 1841. Looking around, and going down into the prisons alongside Fr Cafasso, he had realised the dramatic situation in which the city’s boys found themselves. He had prayed to the Lord to help him “do something” for them.
            On the morning of 8 December, feast of the Immaculate Conception, he had met Bartholomew Garelli, a bricklayer from Asti. In the sacristy attached to the church of St Francis of Assisi, he had given him his first catechism lesson, and made friends with him.
            On the afternoon of that same feast day, during the evening celebration, Don Bosco saw three little bricklayers sleeping, one next to the other, on an altar step. The church was crowded with people, and in the pulpit a preacher was weaving his laborious sermon. Don Bosco approached the three on tiptoe, shook the first one, and in a whisper asked him:
            What is your name?
            “Carlo Buzzetti” replied the boy in confusion, expecting a slap in the face from the priest. “Excuse me, but I tried to pay attention to the sermon. But I didn’t understand anything, and I fell asleep.”
            Instead of a scolding, Charles saw a good smile on the priest’s face, who continued in a whisper:
            “And who are these?”
            “My brother and my cousin” Carlo said, shaking the two little sleepers. “We are bricklayers all week and we are tired.”
            “Come with me” Don Bosco whispered again. And he preceded them into the sacristy.
            “They were Carlo and Giovanni Buzzetti, and Giovanni Gariboldi” Don Bosco emotionally reminded his first Salesians. Little bricklayers from Lombardy who would be with him for thirty, forty years, and whom everyone in Valdocco knew.
            “Back then they were simple errand boys, now they are master builders, esteemed and respected builders.”

Giuseppe, the little brother
            The Buzzettis were from Caronno Ghiringhello (now Caronno Varesino), a large family that lived by working the land. But in Antonio and Giuseppina’s family seven children had been born, too many arms for a small piece of land. As soon as they had come out of childhood, their father Antonio had thought of sending the two older sons to Turin, where there was a colony of bricklayers from Lombardy who earned good money, and came back with a good amount of savings.

            Charles and John told Don Bosco that they had left on wagons from Caronno, in a group with other older villagers who were familiar with the long journey (about a hundred kilometres). Partly on the cart, partly on foot, they had walked carrying a bundle of their poor clothes, and had slept at some farmstead. “Now the dead season is coming for us masons” said Charles. “In a few days we will take the road back to our hometown. We will return in spring, and we will take our third brother, Giuseppe, with us.”
            In those few remaining days, Don Bosco made friends with them. Charles and John returned three days later, on Sunday, at the head of a team of cousins and countrymen. Don Bosco said Mass and gave a lively sermon to them. Then they had breakfast together, sitting in the sunshine in the little courtyard behind the sacristy. They talked about the distant families they would soon see again, about work, about the first savings they could bring home. They got on well with Don Bosco, it seemed as if they had always been friends.
            In the spring of 1842, the Buzzetti brothers returned to Turin from Caronno, accompanied by their little brother who had just turned 10 (he was born on 12 February 1832). Joseph was a pale boy, all bewildered. Don Bosco looked at him tenderly, spoke to him as a friend. Joseph became attached to him like a puppy. He would never detach himself from him again. Even when the brothers, after a new season of work, returned to Caronno, he  would stay with “his” Don Bosco (also because the long road exhausted him). From the spring of 1842 to the dawn of 31 January 1888 when Don Bosco died, Joseph would always be at his side, a calm witness to the whole human and divine story of the priest “who loved him”. Many events in Don Bosco’s life would by now be classified as “legends” in our distrustful and demythologising time, if they had not been seen through the simple eyes of the builder from Caronno, who was always there, a stone’s throw from “his” Don Bosco.

“Would you come and stay with me?”
            Don Bosco went from building site to building site to meet his boys and check that the working conditions imposed on them were not inhuman. He watched with sorrow as Joseph carried bricks and limestone from dawn to dusk. There was so much goodness and intelligence in those eyes. In a few years he would call him and offer to share his life. Michael Rua, the one who would become the second Don Bosco, was still a four-year-old child. But the one who would be his strong arm, his first, true “coadjutor” (brother) in the construction of the Salesian Work, had already arrived. He was Giuseppe (Joseph) Buzzetti.
            The Oratory moved from the sacristy of St Francis to the Marchioness Barolo’s ‘Litle Hospital’, from a cemetery to a mill, from a hovel to a meadow. It ended up under a shed in Valdocco. Meanwhile, Don Bosco told his boys that they would have a grand oratory, workshops and courtyards, churches and schools. More than one said that Don Bosco had gone mad. Joseph Buzzetti stood beside him. He listened to him, he lit up at his smile, he did not even think Don Bosco could be wrong.
            In May 1847 Providence and endless rain brought Don Bosco the first boy who needed to be housed “day and night”. In the same year six others arrived: orphans left alone from one day to the next, young migrants looking for their first job. For them Don Bosco transformed two neighbouring rooms into a small dormitory, placed the beds, and hung a sign on the wall saying “God sees you”. To manage that first microscopic community (nourished by Mamma Margaret’s vegetable garden and pots and pans), Don Bosco needed a young helper he could trust with his eyes closed, a boy who would stay with him forever, and be the first of those clerics and priests that Our Lady had promised him so many times in a dream. That boy would be Joseph Buzzetti.
            Joseph himself recounts: “It was a Sunday evening, and I was observing the recreation of my companions. That day I had recceived Communion with my brothers, so I was really happy. Don Bosco was at recreation with us, telling us the nicest things in the world. Meanwhile night was coming, and I was preparing to go home. When I approached Don Bosco to say goodbye to him, he said:
            “Bravo, I am happy to be able to speak to you. Tell me, would you come and stay with me?”
            “To be with you? Explain.”
            “I need to gather some young men who want to follow me in the Oratory venture. You would be one. I’ll start schooling you. And, God willing, you could be a priest in due course.”
            “I looked into Don Bosco’s face and thought I was dreaming. Then he added”:
            “I will talk to your brother Charles, and we will do what is best in the Lord.”

Invoker of “miracles”
            Charles agreed, and Joseph came to live with Don Bosco and his mother Margaret. Don Bosco entrusted him with the money and finances of the house, with total trust. And in two years he prepared him to wear the black habit of the clerics. He was called by all “the cleric Buzzetti”. It was he who took Michael Rua aside in an asphyxiating August, and gave the heat-worn young man a serious rethink because he was no longer committed to his studies.
            Year after year, Joseph Buzzetti took over from Don Bosco and developed the choir and band, the workshops (especially the printing press of which he became the total manager), the supervision of building works, the administration of the Work that was getting bigger and bigger, the organisation of the lotteries that were for years the indispensable oxygen for the Oratory.
            He was the involuntary instigator of two famous “multiplications” by Don Bosco. In the winter of 1848, during a solemn feast, at the moment of distributing Communion to three hundred boys, Don Bosco realised that there were only eight or nine hosts in the ciborium. Joseph, who was serving Mass, had forgotten to prepare another ciborium full of hosts to be consecrated. When Don Bosco started to distribute the Eucharist, Joseph began to sweat because he saw (while holding the patten) the hosts growing under Don Bosco’s hands, until there were enough for everyone. The following year, on All Souls Day, Don Bosco returned from his visit to the cemetery with the crowd of hungry youngsters to whom he had promised cooked chestnuts. Mamma Margaret, whom Joseph had told to prepare but misinterpreted Don Bosco’s words, had only prepared a small pot of them. Joseph, in the general uproar, tried to make Don Bosco understand that there was only a small quantity of chestnuts. But Don Bosco began to distribute them in a big way, ladling them out. Even that time Joseph began to break out in a cold sweat, because the pot never emptied. At the end everyone’s hands were full of hot chestnuts, and Joseph looked in amazement at the “magic pot” from which Don Bosco continued to fish happily…
            Then there was the time when several people wanted to do away with Don Bosco, and Joseph (who had grown an impressive red beard) became his guardian and defender. “We used to see him almost with envy” recounts John Baptist Francesia, “leaving the Oratory to go and meet Don Bosco who had to return to Valdocco from Turin. A strong hand and a full heart were needed, and Buzzetti was just the right person.” When Joseph was missing with his red beard, a mysterious dog with grey hair appeared, which Mamma Margaret, Michael Rua and Battistin Francesia watched with respect and fear, and which Joseph had to defend from the stones of other frightened boys…

The days of melancholy
            On 25 November 1856 Mamma Margaret died. It was a bitter day for Don Bosco and for all his followers. It was also the day that marked the end of the “Family Oratory” that Joseph had seen and helped to grow. The boys had become so many, and every month they grew in number. A mother was no longer enough, teachers, professors, superiors were needed. Little by little, Joseph handed over the administration to Fr Alasonatti, the choir and the band to Fr Cagliero, the printing shop to Cavalier Oreglia di Santo Stefano. He had taken off the black clerical robes long ago, because too many occupations had never allowed him to continue his studies seriously. Now he saw himself engaged in more and more menial jobs: he assisted in the refectory, set the tables, sent out the Catholic Readings, went into town to look for work for the workshops.
            And one day melancholy and discouragement got the better of him, and he decided to leave the Oratory. He talked to his brothers (who had positions of responsibility in Turin’s construction industry), found a job and went to take leave of Don Bosco. With his usual bluntness he told him that by now he was becoming the last wheel on the wagon, that he had to obey those he had seen arriving as children, whom he had taught to blow their noses. He expressed his sadness at having to leave the house he had helped to build from the days of the canopy. For Don Bosco it was a tremendous blow. But he did not say “Poor me! You leave me in a fine mess!” Instead, he thought of him, his dearest friend, with whom he had shared so many happy and painful hours.
            “Have you found a place yet? Will you get good pay? You will need money for the first few days.” He mentioned the drawers of his desk: “You know these drawers better than I do. Take whatever you need, and if it is not enough, tell me what you need and I will get it for you. I don’t want you, Joseph, to have to suffer any deprivation because of me.” Then he looked at him with that love that only he had for his boys: “We have always loved each other. And I hope you will never forget me.” Then Joseph burst into tears. He cried for a long time and said: “I don’t want to leave Don Bosco. I will stay here forever.”
            When Don Bosco, in December 1887, had to surrender to his final illness, Joseph Buzzetti went to stand beside his bed. He was now 55 years old. His fabulous red beard had become all white. Don Bosco could hardly speak any more, but he still tried to joke by giving him a military salute. When he managed to murmur a few words he said to him: “Oh, my Dear! You are always my beloved boy.”
            30 January was the last day of Don Bosco’s life. Around one o’clock in the afternoon Joseph and Fr Viglietti were beside his bed. Don Bosco opened his eyes wide, tried to smile. Then he raised his left hand and greeted them. Buzzetti burst into tears. In the night, towards dawn, Don Bosco died.
            Now that his great friend had gone with God, Buzzetti felt his life was empty. He looked tired. “We used to look at Joseph” recalls Fr Francesia, “so fond of Don Bosco, like one of those precious things that remind us of so many and so many memories. He spent much of the day in church, by the tabernacle, in front of the painting of Mary Help of Christians.”
            They encouraged him to go to the Salesian house in Lanzo, to breathe  better air. “I go there willingly” he said at the end, “because Don Bosco also went there, and because dear Fr Alasonatti died there. I’ll go up there, and then I’ll go to see Don Bosco again.”
            He died clasping the rosary in his hands. He was 59 years old. It was 13 July 1891.

Every year we celebrate the Holy Family of Nazareth on the last Sunday of the year. But we often forget that we celebrate with pomp the poorest and most delicate events of this Family. Obliged to give birth in a cave, persecuted at once, having to emigrate amidst so many dangers to a foreign country to survive, and this with an infant and no substance. But everything was an event of grace, permitted by God the Father, and announced in the Scriptures.
Let us read the beautiful story that Don Bosco himself told his boys of his time.

The sad annunciation. – The massacre of the innocents. – The holy family left for Egypt.
an angel of the Lord appeared to Joseph in a dream and said, ‘Get up, take the child and his mother, and flee to Egypt, and remain there until I tell you. Matt. II, 13.
A voice is heard in Ramah, lamentation and bitter weeping. Rachel is weeping for her children; she refuses to be comforted for her children, because they are no more. Jer. c. XXXI, v. 15.

            The tranquillity of the holy family [after the birth of Jesus] was not to be of long duration. As soon as Joseph had returned to the poor house in Nazareth, an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream and said to him “Arise, take the child and his mother away from thee, and flee into Egypt, and stay there until I bid thee return. For Herod will seek the child to put him to death.”
            And this was but too true. The cruel Herod, deceived by the Magi and furious at having missed such a good opportunity, in order to get rid of him whom he regarded as a competitor to the throne, had conceived the infernal design of having all male children under two years of age slaughtered. This abominable order was executed.
            A broad river of blood ran through Galilee. Then what Jeremiah had foretold came true: “A voice was heard in Ramah, a voice mixed with tears and lamentations. It is Rachel who weeps for her children and does not wish to be consoled; for they are no more.” These poor innocents, cruelly slain, were the first martyrs of the divinity of Jesus Christ.
            Joseph had recognised the voice of the Angel; nor did he allow himself any reflection on the hasty departure, to which they had to resolve; on the difficulties of so long and so dangerous a journey. He must have regretted leaving his poor home to go across the deserts to seek asylum in a country he did not know. Without even waiting for tomorrow, the moment the angel disappeared he got up and ran to wake Maria. Mary hastily prepared a small amount of clothes and provisions for them to take with them. Joseph meanwhile prepared the mare, and they departed without regret from their city to obey God’s command. Here, then, is a poor old man who renders the horrible plots of the tyrant of Galileein vain ; it is to him that God entrusts the care of Jesus and Mary.

Disastrous journey – A tradition.
When they persecute you in one town, flee to the next. Matt. X, 23.

            Two roads presented themselves to the traveller who wished to go to Egypt by land. One went through deserts populated by ferocious beasts, and the paths were uncomfortable, long and not very busy. The other went through a little-visited country, but the inhabitants of the district were very hostile to the Jews. Joseph, who especially feared men in this precipitate flight, chose the first of these two roads as the most hidden.
            Having set out from Nazareth in the thick of night, the cautious travellers, whose itinerary required them to pass Jerusalem first, beat the saddest and most tortuous paths for some time. When it was necessary to cross some great road, Joseph, leaving Jesus and his Mother in the shelter of a rock, would scout the way, to make sure that the exit was not guarded by Herod’s soldiers. Reassured by this precaution, he returned to get his precious treasure, and the holy family continued its journey, between ravines and hills. From time to time, they would make a brief stop at the edge of a clear stream, and after a frugal meal they would take a little rest from the exertions of the journey. When evening came, it was time to resign oneself to sleeping under the open sky. Joseph stripped off his cloak and covered Jesus and Mary with it to preserve them from the humidity of the night. Then tomorrow, at daybreak, the arduous journey would begin again. The holy travellers, having passed through the small town of Anata, headed on the side of Ramala to descend to the plains of Syria, where they were now to be free from the snares of their fierce persecutors. Against their custom they had continued walking despite the fact that it was already nightfall in order to get to safety sooner. Joseph was almost touching the ground ahead of the others. Mary, all trembling from this nocturnal run, was casting her restless glances into the depths of the valleys and the crevices in the rocks. Suddenly, a swarm of armed men appeared to intercept their path. It was a band of scoundrels, ravaging the district, whose frightful fame stretched far into the distance. Joseph had arrested Mary’s mount, and prayed to the Lord in silence; for any resistance was impossible. At most one could hope to save one’s life. The leader of the brigands broke away from his companions and advanced towards Joseph to see with whom he had to deal. The sight of this old man without arms, of this little child sleeping on his mother’s breast, touched the bandit’s bloodthirsty heart. Far from wishing them any harm, he extended his hand to Joseph, offering him and his family hospitality. This leader was called Dismas. Tradition tells us that thirty years later he was taken by soldiers and condemned to be crucified. He was put on the cross on Calvary at the side of Jesus, and is the same one we know under the name of the good thief.

Arrival in Egypt – Prodigies that occurred on their entry into this land – Village of Matarie – Dwelling of the Holy Family.
Behold, the Lord will ascend on a swift cloud and will enter Egypt, and in his presence the idols of Egypt will tremble. Is. XIX, 1.

            As soon as day appeared, the fugitives, thanking the brigands who had become their hosts, resumed their journey full of dangers. It is said that Mary on setting out said these words to the leader of those bandits: “What you have done for this child, you will one day be amply rewarded for.” After passing through Bethlehem and Gaza, Joseph and Mary descended into Syria and having met a caravan leaving for Egypt they joined it. From this moment until the end of their journey they saw nothing ahead of them but an immense desert of sand, whose aridity was only interrupted at rare intervals by a few oases, that is, a few stretches of fertile and verdant land. Their labours were redoubled during this race across these sun-baked plains. Food was scarce, and water was often lacking. How many nights did Joseph, who was old and poor, find himself pushed back, when he tried to approach the spring, at which the caravan had stopped to quench its thirst!
            Finally, after two months of a very painful journey, the travellers entered Egypt. According to Sozomenus, from the moment the Holy Family touched this ancient land, the trees lowered their branches to worship the Son of God; the ferocious beasts flocked there, forgetting their instincts; and the birds sang in chorus the praises of the Messiah. Indeed, if we believe what we are told by trustworthy authors, all the idols of the province, recognising the victor of Paganism, fell to pieces. Thus were the words of the prophet Isaiah literally fulfilled when he said, “Behold, the Lord will ascend on a swift cloud and will enter Egypt, and in his presence the idols of Egypt will tremble.”
            Joseph and Mary, desirous of reaching the end of their journey soon, did but pass through Heliopolis, consecrated to the worship of the sun, to go to Matari where they intended to rest from their labours.
            Matari is a beautiful village shaded by sycamores, about two leagues from Cairo, the capital of Egypt. There Joseph intended to make his home. But this was not yet the end of his troubles. He needed to seek accommodation. The Egyptians were not at all hospitable; so the holy family was forced to take shelter for a few days in the trunk of a big old tree. Finally, after a long search, Joseph found a modest room, in which he placed Jesus and Mary.
            This house, which can still be seen in Egypt, was a kind of cave, twenty feet long over fifteen feet wide. There were no windows either; light had to penetrate through the door. The walls were of a kind of black and filthy clay, the oldness of which bore the imprint of misery. To the right was a small cistern, from which Joseph drew water for the family’s service.

Sorrows. – Consolation and end of exile.
I will be with them in trouble. Ps. XC. 15.

            As soon as he had entered this new dwelling, Joseph resumed his ordinary work. He began to furnish his house; a small table, a few chairs, a bench, all the work of his hands. Then he went from door to door looking for work to earn a living for his small family. He undoubtedly experienced many rejections and endured many humiliating scorns! He was poor and unknown, and this was enough for his work to be refused. In turn, Mary, while she had a thousand cares for her Son, courageously gave herself to work, occupying in it a part of the night to make up for her husband’s small and insufficient earnings. Yet in the midst of his sorrows how much consolation for Joseph! It was for Jesus that he worked, and the bread that the divine child ate was he who had bought it with the sweat of his brow. And then when he returned in the evening exhausted and oppressed by the heat, Jesus smiled at his arrival, and caressed him with his small hands. Often with the price of privations, which he imposed on himself, Joseph was able to obtain some savings, what joy he then felt at being able to use them to sweeten the condition of the divine child! Now it was some dates, now some toys suitable for his age, that the pious carpenter brought to the Saviour of men. Oh how sweet then were the good old man’s emotions as he contemplated the radiant face of Jesus! When Saturday came, the day of rest and consecrated to the Lord, Joseph took the child by the hand and guided his first steps with a truly paternal solicitude.
            Meanwhile the tyrant who reigned over Israel died. God, whose all-possessing arm always punishes the guilty, had sent him a cruel illness, which quickly led him to the grave. Betrayed by his own son, eaten alive by worms, Herod had died, bringing with him the hatred of the Jews, and the curse of posterity.

The new annunciation. – Return to Judea. – A tradition reported by St Bonaventure.
Out of Egypt I called my son. Hosea XI, 1.

            For seven years Joseph had been in Egypt, when the Angel of the Lord, the ordinary messenger of Heaven’s will, appeared to him again in his sleep and said to him: “Arise, take away the child and his mother from thee, and return to the land of Israel; for those who sought the child to bring him to death are no more. Ever ready for God’s voice, Joseph sold his house and his furniture, and ordered everything for departure. In vain did the Egyptians, enraptured by Joseph’s goodness and Mary’s gentleness, make earnest petitions to retain him. In vain did they promise him an abundance of everything necessary for life, Joseph was adamant. The memories of his childhood, the friends he had in Judea, the pure atmosphere of his homeland, spoke much more to his heart than the beauty of Egypt. Besides, God had spoken, and nothing else was needed to decide Joseph to return to the land of his ancestors.
            Some historians are of the opinion that the holy family made part of the journey by sea, because it took them less time, and they had a great desire to see their homeland again soon. As soon as they landed in Ascalonia, Joseph heard that Archelaus had succeeded his father Herod on the throne. This was a new source of anxiety for Joseph. The angel had not told him in which part of Judea he should settle. Should he do this in Jerusalem, or in Galilee, or in Samaria? Joseph filled with anxiety prayed to the Lord to send him his heavenly messenger during the night. The angel ordered him to flee from Archelaus and retreat to Galilee. Joseph then had no more to fear, and quietly took the road to Nazareth, which he had abandoned seven years before.
            Let not our devoted readers be sorry to hear from the seraphic Doctor St Bonaventure on this point of history: “They were in the act of departing: and Joseph went first with the men, and his mother came with the women (who had come as friends of the holy family to accompany them a little way). And when they were out of the door, Joseph took the men back, and would not let them accompany him any more. Then some of those good men, having compassion on the poverty of these men, called the Child and gave him some money for expenses. The Child was ashamed to receive them; but, for the sake of poverty, he set forth his hand and received the money shamefully and thanked him. And so did more people. Those honourable matrons called him again and did the same; the mother was no less ashamed than the child, but nevertheless humbly thanked them.”
            Having taken leave of that warm company and renewed their thanks and greetings, the holy family turned their steps towards Judea.

(continuation from previous article)

4. Conclusion
            In the epilogue of Francis Besucco’s life, Don Bosco makes the core of his message explicit:

             I would like both of us to come to a conclusion which will be to our mutual advantage. It is certain that sooner or later death will come for both of us, and it is possible that it will come sooner than we think. It is equally certain that if we don’t perform good works during our life we won’t be able to reap their fruit at the point of death, nor we can we expect any reward from God. […] I encourage you, Christian reader, I encourage you to perform good works whilst we have time; our sufferings are of short duration and what we shall enjoy lasts forever. […] O Lord, help me, help me to persevere in the observance of your precepts during the days of my life so that we can one day go to Heaven to enjoy great happiness for ever and ever. Amen.”[1]

            It is on this point, in fact, that Don Bosco’s discourses converge. Everything else appears functional: his art of education, his affectionate and creative accompaniment, the advice he offered and the programme of life, Marian devotion and the sacraments, everything is oriented towards the primary object of his thoughts and concerns, the great business of eternal salvation.[2]
            Thus, in the Turin saint’s educational practice, the monthly exercise for a happy death continues a rich spiritual tradition, adapting it to the sensitivity of his young people and with a marked educational concern. In fact, the monthly review of life, the sincere account of it to our confessor-spiritual director, the encouragement to place ourselves in a state of constant conversion, the reconfirmation of the gift of self to God and the systematic formulation of concrete resolutions oriented towards Christian perfection, are its central and constitutive moments. Even the litany for a happy death had no other purpose than to nourish confidence in God and offer an immediate encouragement to approach the sacraments with special awareness. They were also – as the narrative sources show – an effective psychological tool to make the thought of death familiar, not in a distressing way, but as an incentive to constructively and joyfully value every moment of life in view of the “blessed hope”. The emphasis, in fact, was on virtuous and joyful living, “servite Domino in laetitia.”

[1] Bosco, Il pastorello delle Alpi , 179-181.

[2] This is how the Life of Dominic Savio concludes: “and like Dominic, when our time comes, see death approach with peace and joy in our hearts. How happy we will be then to meet Jesus Our Saviour who will judge us according to his mercy, and in his goodness lead us to an eternity of happiness. Amen.”, Bosco, Vita del giovanetto Savio Domenico, 136.

.

(continuation from previous article)

3. Death as a moment of joyful encounter with God
            Like all the considerations and instructions in the Companion of Youth the meditation on death is marked by a marked didactic concern.[1] The thought of death as a moment that fixes all eternity must stimulate the sincere purpose of a good and virtuous life that is fruitful:

            Consider that your eternal happiness or your eternal damnation depend on that fateful moment. […] Do you understand what I am saying? On that moment depends whether you go to heaven or to hell; whether you will be always happy or always tormented; whether you will be forever a child of God or a slave of the devil; whether you will rejoice with the angels and the saints in heaven or groan and burn with the damned in hell for all eternity. These are great issues for your soul and reflect that upon a good life depends a happy death and eternal glory. Therefore delay no longer but prepare to make a good confession and to put your conscience in order. Promise God to forgive your enemies, to repair the scandal you have given, to be more obedient, to abstain from meat on the appointed days, to waste no more time, to keep the Holy days of Obligation in a worthy manner, to fulfil the duties of your state. Meanwhile place yourself in the presence of God and tell him with all your heart: “My God, from this moment I return to you. I love you and I want to love and serve you unto death. Most Holy Virgin, my Mother, help me in that moment. Jesus, Joseph and Mary, may I breathe forth my soul in peace with you.”[2]

            However the most complete and also the most expressive of Don Bosco’s unbderstanding and cultural frameworks on the theme of death is found in his first narrative text, written in memory of Luigi Comollo (1844). There he recounts the death of his friend “…saying the holy names of Jesus and Mary, his beautiful soul quietly left his body and flew, as we devoutly hope, to its rest in the Lord’s peace. His face was serene and a smile played about it as if he was seeing something marvellous.”[3] But the placid passing so succinctly described had been preceded by a detailed description of a tormented final illness: “ It is also good to note that an innocent soul adorned with so many virtues as was Comollo’s, tells us that there is nobody who does not dread the approaching hour of death. He too experienced great apprehension.”[4] Louis had spent the last week of his life but seemed “sad and melancholic, all taken up with the thoughts of divine judgement.” On the evening of the sixth day, “Around eight o’clock the fever became very strong; at a quarter past eight he begun to go into convulsions and lost his senses. At first he cried out at length as if he were terrified by some frightening object or some grim spectre. From then until half past eight he came back to his senses somewhat and looking at those standing around he cried out in a loud voice: ‘Oh, judgement!’ Then he began writhing with such strength that five or six of us around him could hardly keep him in the bed.”[5] After three hours of delirium, he “he returned fully to his senses.” and confided to his friend Bosco the reason for his agitation: he had seemed to find himself in front of a wide-open hell, threatened by “a countless number of monsters”, but he had been rescued by a squad “of strong warriors” and then, led by the hand of “a Woman” (“whom I consider to have been the Mother of us all”), he had found himself “in a delightful garden” which is why he now felt calm. Thus, “the fact was that however great was his fear of appearing before God, he then demonstrated his desire that this moment should come immediately. There was no more melancholy or sadness on his face. He was all smiles and happily wanted to sing psalms, hymns or spiritual praises.”[6]
            Tension and anguish are resolved in a joyful spiritual experience: it is the Christian vision of death sustained by the certainty of victory over the infernal enemy through the power of Christ’s grace, which opens the gates of blessed eternity, and through the maternal assistance of Mary. It is in this light that Comollo’s account should be interpreted. The “great abyss like a deep huge furnace” near which he finds himself, the “countless monsters of all horrible and different shapes” that try to plunge him into the abyss, the “strong warriors” who rescue him “from such a predicament”, the long staircase leading to the “delightful garden” defended “by many serpents ready to devour anyone who tried to climb up”, the Woman “dressed in great magnificence” who takes him by the hand, guides him and defends him: it all goes back to the religious imagery that encapsulates a solid theology of salvation in the form of symbols and metaphors, the conviction of being personally destined for happy eternity and the vision of life as a journey towards beatitude, undermined by infernal enemies but sustained by the omnipotent help of divine grace and the patronage of Mary. The Romantic sense, which imbues the fact of faith with intense emotionality and drama, spontaneously makes use of traditional folk symbolism, yet the horizon is one of a broadly optimistic and historically active vision of faith.
            Further on, Don Bosco reports an extensive discourse by Louis. It is almost a testament in which two main interrelated themes emerge. The first is the importance of cultivating throughout life the thought of death and judgement. The arguments are those of the preaching and devout publicity of the time: “you do not know if your days on earth will be short or long; but however uncertain may be the hour of death, it will certainly come; therefore do things so that your entire life is a preparation for death, for judgement… Men only think of death occasionally, they believe that this hour will come even though they don’t want it to, but they do not ready themselves, so when the moment arrives they are agitated and afraid, greatly embarrassed in finding themselves needing to sort out matters of their soul.”[7]
            The second theme is the link between Marian devotion and the good death. “Since for all the time that we struggle in this vale of tears we have no other more powerful advocate than Mary most holy, you must therefore profess a special devotion to her. Oh! If people could be persuaded of the happiness that comes at the hour of death from devotion to Mary, everyone would be competing to find new ways to give her special honour. It will be her, with her son in her arms, who will be our defence against the enemy of our soul at the final hour. Even though all of hell might be arrayed against us, with Mary in our defence, victory will be ours. Look for other things from those who recite some prayer to Mary, or offer some simple mortification, and then believe they are protected by her, while they lead a shameless life. […] May you always be truly a devotee of Mary by imitating her virtues, and you will experience the sweet effects of her goodness and love.”[8] These reasons are close to those presented by Louis-Marie Grignion de Montfort (1673-1716) in the third chapter of the Traité de la vraie dévotion à la sainte Vierge (which, however, neither Comollo nor John Bosco could have known).[9] All classical Mariology, conveyed by preaching and ascetic books, insisted on such aspects: we find them in St Alphonsus (Glorie di Maria);[10] before him, we find them in the writings of Jesuits Jean Crasset and Alexander Diaotallevi,[11] from whose work Comollo is said to have drawn inspiration for the invocation before his death:

Holy Virgin, kind mother, dear mother of my beloved Jesus, of all creatures you alone were worthy to bear him in your immaculate womb. Through the love with which you gave him suck, held him on your arms, suffered with him in his poverty, saw him ill-treated, spat upon, flogged and finally die suffering terribly on the cross. Through all of this obtain for me the grace of courage, keen faith, firm hope, ardent charity, sincere sorrow for my sins; and to all the favours that you have granted me throughout my life add the grace that I might die a holy death. Yes, dear and merciful Mother, assist me at this moment when I am about to present my soul to divine judgement; you yourself can present me in the arms of your divine Son; if you promise me this here I am with ardent and frank spirit, dependent on your clemency and goodness and I present my soul through your hands to the Supreme Majesty from whom I hope to receive mercy.[12]

            This text shows the solidity of the theological framework underlying the religious sentiment with which the story is imbued, and reveals a “regulated” Marian devotion, an austere and very concrete spirituality.
            The Cenni sulla vita di Luigi Comollo (Life of Louis Comollo), with all its dramatic tension, represent the John Bosco’s sensitivity as a seminarian and student at the Convitto. In later years, as his educational and pastoral experience among young people grew, the Saint preferred to highlight only the joyful and soothing side of Christian death. We see this especially in the biographies of Dominic Savio, Michael Magone and Francis Besucco, but we find examples of it already in the Companion of Youth where, narrating the holy death of Aloysius Gonzaga, he states, “The things that can disturb us at the point of death are especially the sins of our past life and the fear of divine chastisements in the next life”, but if we imitate him by leading a virtuous life, which is “truly angelic”, we will be able to welcome with joy the announcement of death as he did, singing the Te Deum full of “joy” – “Oh what joy, we are leaving: Laetantes imus” – and “in the embrace of the crucified Jesus he died peacefully. What a beautiful death!”[13]
            All three Lives conclude with the invitation to be prepared for a good death. In Don Bosco’s pedagogy, as mentioned, the subject was presented with particular emphases aimed at conversion of the heart which is “frank and resolute”[14] and of the total gift of self to God, which generates an ardent living, fruitful of spiritual fruits, of ethical and at the same time joyful commitment. This is the perspective in which, in these biographies, Don Bosco presents the exercise for a happy death:[15] is an excellent tool to educate to the Christian vision of death, to urge an effective and periodic review of one’s lifestyle and actions, to encourage an attitude of constant openness and cooperation to the action of grace, fruitful in works, to positively dispose the soul to the encounter with the Lord. It is not by chance that the concluding chapters depict the last hours of these three characters as a fervent and calm expectation of the encounter. Don Bosco reports the serene dialogues, the “tasks” entrusted to the dying,[16] the farewells. The instant of death is then described almost as a blissful ecstasy.
            In the last moments of his life, Dominic Savio had the prayers for a happy death read to him by his father:

            “Dad, it is time; get my Companion of Youth and read me the prayers for the Exercise of a Happy Death”.
At these words his mother burst into tears and hurried from the room. His father’s eyes filled with tears, but choking back his sobs, he got the book and read the prayers. As he went through them Dominic answered clearly.
“Merciful Jesus, have mercy on me …”.
When his father reached the final part which runs: “When for the first time my soul will see the wonderful majesty of God, do not drive it away, but take it to heaven to sing your praises for all eternity . . .”, he said:
“Yes, Dad – that is what I want so much, to sing the praises of Jesus for all eternity”.
He dropped off to sleep again, but it was like he was reflecting on things of great importance. He awoke after a short while. Then in a clear voice he said: “Goodbye, Dad, goodbye . . . what was it the parish priest suggested to me … I don’t seem to remember . . . Oh, what wonderful things I see …”.
And so saying, with a beautiful smile on his face, and his hands joined on his breast he gave up his soul to God without any struggle.[17]

            Michael Magone passed away “peacefully”, “He parted his lips as if to smile and gently fell back in death”, after kissing the crucifix and invoking, “Jesus, Mary and Joseph, I place my soul in your hands.”.[18]
            The final moments of Francis’ life are characterised by extraordinary phenomena and uncontainable ardour: “His face appeared to be stronger and to have more colour in it than when he had been healthy. Its beauty and radiance was such that it eclipsed the infirmary lights”; “the dying boy lifted his head a little and stretched out his hands as if to shake hands with someone he loved. Then in a joyful resonant voice he sang, ‘Praise Mary, […]. Afterwards he made several efforts to lift himself up and devoutly stretching out his hands, he began to sing again, O Jesus of burning love […]. He seemed to have become an angel with the angels in paradise,”[19]

(continued)

[1] Cf. Bosco, The Companion of Youth, 36-39 (consideration for Tuesday: Death).

[2] Ibid., 38-39.

[3] [John Bosco], Cenni storici sulla vita del chierico Luigi Comollo morto nel Seminario di Chieri ammirato da tutti per le sue singolari virtù. Scritti da un suo collega, Torino, Tipografia Speirani e Ferrero, 1844, 70-71.

[4] Ibid., 49.

[5] Ibid., 52-53.

[6] Ibid., 53-57.

[7] Ibid., 61.

[8] Ibid., 62-63.

[9] Grignion de Monfort’s work was only discovered in 1842 and published in Turin for the first time fifteen years later: Trattato della vera divozione a Maria Vergine del ven. servo di Dio L. Maria Grignion de Montfort. Version from the French of C. L., Turin, Tipografia P. De-Agostini, 1857.

[10] Second part, chapter IV (Vari ossequi di divozione verso la divina Madre colle loro pratiche), where the author states that to obtain Mary’s protection “two things are necessary: the first is that we offer her our respect with our souls cleansed of sins […]. The second condition is that we persevere in devotion to her” (Le glorie di Maria di sant’Alfonso Maria de’ Liguori, Torino, Giacinto Marietti, 1830, 272).

[11] Jean Crasset, La vera devozione verso Maria Vergine stabilita e difesa. Venezia, nella stamperia Baglioni, 1762, 2 vols.; Alessandro Diotallevi, Trattenimenti spirituali per chi desidera d’avanzarsi nella servitù e nell’amore della Santissima Vergine, dove si ragiona sopra le sue feste e sopra gli Evangelii delle domeniche dell’anno applicandoli alle meditoli alla medesima Vergine con rari avvenimenti, Venezia, presso Antonio Zatta,

1788, 3 vols.

[12] [Bosco], Cenni storici sulla vita del chierico Luigi Comollo, 68-69; cf. Diotallevi, Trattenimenti spirituali…, vol. II, pp. 108-109 (Trattenimento XXVI: Colloquio dove l’anima supplica la B. Vergine che voglia esserle Avvocata nella gran causa della sua salute).

[13] Bosco, The Companion of Youth, 70-71.

[14] Cf. Bosco, Cenno biografico sul giovanetto Magone Michele (Life of Michael Magone), 24.

[15] For example, cf. Bosco, Vita del giovanetto Savio Domenico (Life of Dominic Savio), 106-107: ‘On the morning of his departure he did with his companions the exercise for a happy death with such devotion in confessing and taking communion, that I, who witnessed it, do not know how to express it. It is necessary, he said, that I do this exercise well, because I hope it will truly be for me that of my good death’.

[16] “But before I let you leave for paradise I would like to charge you with an errand […]. When you are in paradise and have seen the great Virgin Mary, give her a humble and respectful greeting from me and from those in this house. Pray to her that she deigns to give us her holy blessing; that she may receive us all under her powerful protection, and help us so that none of those who are, or who Divine Providence will send to this house may get lost”, Bosco, Cenno biografico sul giovanetto Magone Michele (Life of Michael Magone), 82.

[17] Bosco, Vita del giovanetto Savio Domenico (Life of Dominic Savio), 118-119.

[18] Bosco, Cenno biografico sul giovanetto Magone Michele, 83. Fr. Zattini could no longer control his emotions and exclaimed: “O Death, you are not a punishment for innocent souls! For these you are the great benefactor who opens the doors to joys that will last for ever.. Oh, why cannot I be in your place, Michael?” (ibid., 84).

[19] John Bosco, Il pastorello delle Alpi ovvero vita del giovane Besucco Francesco d’Argentera, Turin, Tip. dell’Orat. di S. Franc. di Sales, 1864, 169-170.