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The Salesians of Don Bosco are one of the biggest missionary congregations in the Church today. It was a powerful intervention by the Holy Spirit that brought into existence this religious family a century and half ago. God in his inscrutable designs called the young shepherd, David, to be king of Israel. He also called another poor shepherd boy, from an interior Italian village, to initiate the vast Salesian movement with a special mission on behalf of poor young people. John Bosco (Don Bosco) was born on 16 August 1815 in Becchi, in the Piedmontese region of northern Italy.
He was a versatile genius, a great educator, a builder, an intermediary between the Holy See and the Italian states, the confidant of Popes, a missionary, an author, a writer , Marian devotee, a saint – all rolled into one. John Paul II declared him father and teacher of the young. Pius IX rightly referred to him as a “giant of sanctity.”
The saintly founder, already as a little child, eagerly desired to become a priest. He faced many obstacles on the way. But nothing deterred him. He also met in his early life men and women of high spiritual caliber who encouraged and supported him. First in the list was his own mother, popularly known as Mamma Margaret, whose process of canonization is now underway. It was this truly Christian mother who placed him in the path of holiness and of extraordinary divine interventions, in the form of dream/visions that guided John Bosco as he tried to respond to God’s call. |