(ANS - Rome)– Don Bosco was ordained priest on 5 June 1841. On the feast of the Immaculate Conception of the same year he met a young man called Bartholomew Garelli in the church where he had celebrated his first Mass.  Every Sunday after that first meeting, a growing number of boys used to gather at the nearby hostel. By the following February there were twenty of them, thirty by late March; nearly a hundred by 26 July, the feast of St. Anne, the patron of masons. Today, 8 December, in the year of the Bicentenary of his birth, we recognize the importance of that first meeting for the mission of the Spiritual Family of Don Bosco.

                                                               By Andrés Felipe Loaiza, SDB

In the months following his ordination, while he was still continuing his studies and formation, Don Boscoreflected on his mission. He was more and more convinced that this mission was from the Lord, but the realization of his dream was proving very complicated and there were many obstacles.

It was on 8 December 1841, that Don Bosco met Bartholomew Garelli, a young man in need of human and religious education.  Over the years that meeting proved to be the model for many other boys who were cared for, first by Don Bosco, and then by his Salesians and the vast Salesian Family.

In the Salesian Bulletin of April 2013 there is a description of the young people who flocked to the city of Turin in those years when Don Bosco was gradually clarifying his mission among the most needy young people  of his time:"The young men who attended the oratory in these early days were mainly labourers and unskilled workers. They spent only part of the year in Turin, from late autumn to the end of June when there was no farming work to be had. They came from Savoy, Switzerland, Val d’Aosta, Biella, Novara,and  Lombardy. These young seasonal migrants were still common in the Oratory until the mid-fifties, when immigration in Turin became stable. The boys used to gather for catechism and games in the sacristy of the church of St. Francis of Assisi and in the small courtyard nearby."  (This text from the Italian Salesian Bulletin can be found at the following link).

Finally, in the Memoirs of the Oratory, he tells how the work done with young people with criminal records who had just come out of prison, produced results that have become today the primary source for the mission of the Salesian Family:"It was then I realized from my own experience that if these young men just out of prison got a helping hand and found someone to take care of them and accompany them on Sundays, help them to find work with honest employers and visit them occasionally during the week, they would leave their past behind and live an honorable life as good Christians and honest citizens." (MO 122-123).

In the year of the bicentenary of the birth of Don Bosco,  we in the Salesian Family know that Don Bosco’s meeting with Bartholomew Garelli is repeated every day in different Salesian works throughout the world. We try to discover for ourselves, as Don Bosco did in his time, the best way to accompany poor and needy young people. The Salesian Family today continues to fulfil the dream of Don Bosco.

Published 08/12/2014