(ANS - Rome) – “The world we have prepared for the new generations smothers their right to happiness. (…) I think that if Don Bosco was with us today he would say to us: ‘we have more than enough diagnoses, what we need now is prescriptions’”. These are some of the considerations offered by Msgr. Enrico dal Covolo, SDB, Rector of the Pontifical Lateran University, in an interview with the Vatican Insider, a few days ago. Let us quote some excerpts.

What does it mean to be a Salesian educator?

Do you know what happens every day on social networks which I also use? A mass of young people who desperately need to be noticed, who desperately seek to get “Likes” and are often willing to do anything just to be “seen” and “shared”… What role does a Salesian educator play in such a context? It is someone who feels unconditional love for the young, regardless of their qualities and performance; "It is enough for you to be young for me to love you very much,” Don Bosco used to say. Basically he would give all young people a “Like” no matter what.

Salesian educators care about the rational not just the emotional dimension. Loving is not enough; the challenges the youth situation poses need to be taken seriously. Love needs to translate into concrete plans and large-scale efforts in favour of young people.

Why celebrate the bicentennial of Saint Giovanni Bosco’s birth? What does the founder of the Salesians say to the men and women and above all to the young people of the third millennium?

The world we have prepared for the new generations smothers their right to happiness... Do you know that in Europe, suicide is the second cause of death among adolescents and the first among young people? The point here is that what is lacking are solutions, we are all able to diagnose a problem but when I look around, both inside and outside the Church, I see that “exit strategies” are missing. This is where Don Bosco – whose bicentennial we celebrate this year – comes in. He really was God’s entrepreneur for the wellbeing of young people. His careful analysis of the situation of young people and the concrete solutions he came up with, turned out to be an explosive and beneficial mix. I think that if Don Bosco was with us today he would say to us: “we have more than enough diagnoses, what we need now is prescriptions.”

Published 08/12/2014