The impact of Turin’s youth

10. The impact of Turin’s youth

Don Bosco might have had some sort of dependence on other people both in culture and literature. But beyond all this, those who had most impact on Don Bosco’s formation were the young and his fellow workers coming, as they did, from the most diverse backgrounds. Don Bosco’s formation from his actual experience must be seen as the starting point. Of particular importance was his encounter with the youth of Turin during the years he spent at the Convitto Ecclesiastico, in the prisons, on the streets and in catechism classes. That was an entirely new experience. Most certainly what prepared Don Bosco for such an experience was not the rural world in which he had lived, and certainly not the Latin school of Chieri and not, at least from a practical point of view, the theological knowledge acquired at the seminary. His real school was the school of personal experience, and that school changed as the times and situations changed. Don Bosco was obliged to constantly restructure his perception of reality as his experience changed. On the other hand, with a realistically open-minded temperament and an ability to read situations, Don Bosco always showed particular sensitivity to those he met and with whom he lived. We should not be surprised if his rigorous fidelity to ideals and his determination to achieve great plans may have not prevented him from understanding and responding to requests, to the needs, to the characters of those he cared for. He was particularly sensitive to the changing needs of young people, something which varied considerably throughout his long life of educational activity from 1841-1888, even though he lived in different historical, social and cultural conditions. There are many examples to prove this. Above all we see it in Don Bosco’s daily and intensively personalised contact with his boys: in the playground, in his office, in the Good Night talks, in the confessional, in his letters, in his various initiatives as a writer, as an organiser and as a director or administrator.

This contact is expressly documented in the Memoirs of the Oratory of St Francis de Sales which in its very pages and general inspiration could be considered as the reflective expression of an authentic pedagogy, from his first rural Oratorian experience to his experience of working in the city of Turin.

Further proof is found in the various biographies written by Don Bosco, biographies that show us quite clearly how he related to the young men in his care, being with them, talking to them according to their ability to understand. In these biographies we see the way he stressed the significant qualities of his educational method, duty, study, cheerfulness, and the sacraments. The Power of a Good Education (1855); The Life of Dominic Savio (1859); A Biographical Sketch of Michael Magone (1861); The Little Shepherd from the Alps (1864). All of these biographies are like so many expressions of educational experience; they are stories which express a systematic pedagogy.

Finally, we should not forget the documents which Don Bosco produced throughout his life and which give voice to his understanding of education in the minute detail of everyday experience: namely his many letters to authorities and benefactors; letters to friends and collaborators; and especially letters to educators and groups of young people. These letters are the expression of the way he shared his continual educative presence.

Many more elements will mentioned in the following chapters. Don Bosco’s dream visions themselves could offer an indication of the growing awareness he had for the needs of young people. More than esoteric nightly fantasies, those dreams help us appreciate a deeper understanding of Don Bosco’s Preventive System. The dreams should be considered as the outward expressions of feelings of anxiety, visions which express his concern: the present and eternal happiness of the young, the dangers which threaten their happiness, the initiatives he needed to discover in order to further that happiness. In essence, the dreams reveal the deep meaning of Don Bosco’s life and the meaning of his mission as an educator.

9. Chapter 8

14. The works, the heart, the style

It follows naturally then that the fundamental features of the preventive experience to be analysed in the following chapters can be understood only if strictly connected with Don Bosco’s life, temperament and personality traits. This is what the present chapter aims to recall at least in summary fashion.⁵⁵⁴

15. 1. The works

In a letter to the Marquis Michael Benso di Cavour, the city’s vice governor, and dated March 13, 1846, Don Bosco writes: “The aim of these catechism classes is that of gathering those youngsters on festive days who, left to themselves, never go to any church for catechetical instruction. This is done by using kind words, promises, gifts and similar devices. The teaching is precisely concentrated on: 1) love for work; 2) frequent reception of the holy sacraments; 3) respect for authority; 4) avoiding bad companions”.⁵⁵⁷

A little later, the desire to give shelter to the most needy youngsters led Don Bosco to create a modest home, “the annex, next to the Oratory”, which increased the demands and urgent need for help.⁵⁵⁸ For this reason, Don Bosco wrote about the matter to Count Clemente Solaro Della Margherita, the conservative Foreign Minister of the Kingdom of Sardinia, from 1835 to 1847:

Without even looking at other expenses, the Baker’s bill alone for the past three months is more than 1600 francs (approx.5 million lire or $2,500), and I do not know yet where I can find a cent. At any rate, they have to eat. And if I do not provide a piece of bread for these youngsters, who are ‘at risk’ and also ‘dangerous’ I am seriously exposing them to harm in soul and body. This is not a question of giving a hand-out to a particular individual but of offering a piece of bread to young men who are driven by their hunger to seriously risk the loss of morality and religion.⁵⁵⁹

Chronologically, the first undertaking Don Bosco worked on was the Oratory, the Sunday location for “young people “abandoned” to their own devices: far away from their families or neglected by them; resident or immigrant workers without any fixed point of reference; young people just out of a correctional institution, apprentices looking for work; students who, because of the abrogation law issued by Charles Felix’s Regolamenti saw the so-called ‘congregations’ (Religious gatherings)⁵⁶⁰ as falling out of favour. In connection with the Oratory we should also remember the various kinds of undertakings Don Bosco initiated: such as schools accessible to the general public, which gradually took on a consistency of their own within the complex area of Don Bosco’s undertakings: schools for music and singing, schools for basic literacy, schools for general culture, evening and Sunday schools, which were only a prelude to the Day schools, hostels etc.

Don Bosco wrote later on in the Memoirs of the Oratory of singing and music: “Ever since then I came to realise that without the circulation of the song books, books to relax with, the weekend gatherings would have been like a body without the spirit.⁵⁶¹ During the winter of 1846-4 and 7, our schools gained excellent results: we had an average 300 students every evening. What gave life to our classes, besides science, was the plain-chant and our vocal music which were fostered among us at all times”.⁵⁶²

When, after 1848, Don Bosco saw that the “dangers to which the youngsters were exposed, as far as morality and religion were concerned, demanded greater efforts to defend them”, he thought it best “to add classes vocal music classes to those for piano and organ, with the instruments themselves, to the day and evening classes: a kind of nascent Philharmonic Society with Don Bosco himself as the Maestro, but always with the help of competent people.⁵⁶³ He responded to similar urgent needs several decades later, in 1871-1872 to be exact, when he organised the first elementary day schools at Valdocco. “These schools were primarily for boys”, as he explained to the mayor of Turin when he appealed to him for financial aid, “who were roaming the streets all day long due to their parents neglect or because they were poorly dressed, or were just living in laziness. They were a harm to themselves and a disturbance to the authorities in charge of public security”.⁵⁶⁴

The Associations and sodalities of various types, set up according to age and according to the different types of youngsters and various objectives, hold a relevant place in Don Bosco’s activity for youth. His natural genius created La Società dell’allegria (The Happy Company). Don Bosco’s religious tradition created the Sodalities. The need to oppose modern forms of coming together inspired Don Bosco to create the Mutual Aid Society. He profited from similar tendencies to group together with what he thought would respond to the needs of the times, by encouraging the Conferences of St Vincent de Paul, among the young.⁵⁶⁵

But the institution which is the other major work amongst Don Bosco’s best efforts along with the Oratory, is the home, which later widened its horizons to becoming a boarding school for youngsters taking on advanced studies and professional formation.⁵⁶⁶ The home would in time become a self-sufficient institution with its own workshops, schools; and a comprehensive centre providing material aid, religious and moral assistance, instruction, recreation, in short, a true centre for complete formation of the young. In certain areas the home would become the most widely spread work of the Congregation founded by Don Bosco. The relationship between home and Oratory would be reversed in a certain sense: initially, the home was an annex to the Oratory; later the Oratory was to be an institution joined to the home.⁵⁶⁷ Don Bosco identified the origins of the home in these words:

While the means to provide the youngsters with religious and literary instruction were easily organised, another much greater need appeared, needing an urgent response. Many youngsters from the city of Turin and from outside the city had the best of intentions of leading a good moral life and a life of work. But when they were asked to begin, they usually said that they had neither bread nor clothes nor place to find shelter, at least for a time... When I came to realise that any work on behalf of these youngsters would be useless if they had not been provided with shelter, then I took pains to quickly rent more and more rooms at high prices.⁵⁶⁸

The burning desire of many youngsters to have regular learning forced me to make some exceptions as far as the acceptance procedures into the home were concerned. We also accepted young men who were not really abandoned or utterly poor but willing to study, provided they showed good moral conduct and an aptitude for studies that would leave no doubt for well-founded hope of an honourable and Christian success in pursuing a scientific career.⁵⁶⁹

One of the initiatives perhaps less known and yet among Don Bosco’s most cherished and one which was to guarantee not only the continuity of his work but also the possibility of extending his Christian and educational efforts, was the promotion and formation of people ready to consecrate their lives to Christian and educational activity in the priesthood and religious life. This was Don Bosco’s interest in ecclesiastical and religious vocations.

The occasion was provided by the particular circumstances of the seminary in Turin,⁵⁷¹ but Don Bosco’s concern for vocations remained constant and even increased with the expansion of his work and wider perspectives on the needs of the young. To achieve his goal, Don Bosco founded colleges organised along the lines of minor seminaries, and at times he accepted the administration of diocesan seminaries when some bishops entrusted them to him.

For this undertaking, Don Bosco promoted charitable endowments and support; he made sacrifices to obtain hard-won exemptions from military service and from other economic burdens. As a way of supporting this initiative, he founded the Work of Mary Help of Christians for vocations to the ecclesiastical state, mostly for young-adults. This was an offshoot of the generous missionary drive which animated his religious society in 1875.⁵⁷²

Another wide-open field particularly suited to Don Bosco’s gifted approach and understanding was publishing, editorial work and book shops. Don Bosco’s written was prodigious, especially in the catechetical, religious, devotional, apologetic and hagiographical fields. But he soon widened the possibilities of spreading his publications by creating printing presses, book stores and publishing houses of ever growing proportions.⁵⁷³

Don Bosco never overlooked his concern for the schools, as proven by his publication on The metrical-decimal system (1849) nor his concern for the entertainment field, as proven by the production of short stories and even by drama: The House of fortune (1865). He also began a newspaper, short-lived, entitled The friend of youth (1848-1849).

Along with the above, Don Bosco set up the structures required for periodicals and book series. These were successful in the field of popular culture and with Catholic schools. This is shown by: the Catholic readings which began in 1853,⁵⁷⁴ the Library for Italian Youth, (1869-1885, 204 small volumes), Selected readings taken from Latin writers and for the use of schools (from 1866)⁵⁷⁵, The Salesian Bulletin (from 1877), A short collection of dramatic readings for educational institutions and families (from 1885).

This literary activity was joined by a rich production of books and booklets of a controversial nature for “the defence the Catholic faith against the proselytising of reformed churches, and against the anticlerical press”. These books and booklets were widely distributed and at a very root of pastoral and educational initiatives such as the foundation of oratories, homes and churches. The main objective was always the salvation of the young and the ordinary folk: “To wrest the souls of poor youngsters from the jaws of heresy”.⁵⁷⁶

In addition to the above, Don Bosco was also a generous and courageous builder of churches and chapels, and centres for pastoral ministry among the people. We are dealing with something which finds its humble roots in the tiny chapel made from the Pinardi Shed in 1846, followed, years later, by the Church of St Francis de Sales and, a few years later still, by the Church of Mary Help of Christians. The larger churches, such as the Church of St John the Evangelist in Turin, and the Church of the Sacred Heart of Jesus in Rome, kept Don Bosco busy for more than 10 years of worries and hardships. Everywhere you go you see that church, oratory, school, home are Don Bosco’s inseparable institutions, in Turin as in Rome, at Vallecrosia as in Nice, Buenos Aires, Marseille, and La Spezia.⁵⁷⁷

Reference to Don Bosco’s activity with sacred buildings brings us back to the constant and often secret work he carried out, from the first to the last day of his priestly life, namely the work of building morally upright and religiously fervent consciences. He did this for the most varied types and people who were looked down on most. A treatise on Don Bosco the confessor, spiritual director, guide of souls, would be equal in size to any reconstruction of his activity as an educator. It would cover his relationship with individuals, his preaching to the masses, his specialised talks given during Retreats. At any rate, this activity penetrates and pervades his activity as an educator, shifting it from the human level to moments and reflections of a clearly Christian character.

Don Bosco also carried out enormous and constant activity, for some 30 years, as the founder of the Society of St Francis de Sales, made up of priests and brothers, and of the Institute of the Daughters of Mary help of Christians, with work similar to that of the Salesians, for girls, and The Pious Union of the Salesian Cooperators. These foundations followed several clear stages: their setting up, the juridical stage, canonical recognition, the formation and animation of their members and finally, their consolidation and expansion.

This work was carried out at the same time and in close interaction with the development, direction, administration of all the other educational and pastoral institutions. It was accompanied by a frenetic search for the necessary charitable support, with consequent letters written in all directions and personal relationships with benefactors, private and public, and finally with ecclesiastics and lay people.

By comparison with these main activities Don Bosco’s sporadic negotiations between political and ecclesiastical authorities were marginal but not irrelevant. These occurred in order to work out solutions to some difficult situation juridical and pastoral problems in Italy.⁵⁷⁸

And finally, we should not forget his daring action carried out from a distance on behalf of migrants and the Missions. From 1875 onwards, missionary activity gave a wider breath of Catholicity to a work with universal potential but still enclosed within national boundaries. Don Bosco lived this missionary experience with exceptional enthusiasm. It gave him, during the time of his advanced maturity, almost a tinge of a second youth. But in truth, Don Bosco went back to the same refrain: “The only desire we have is to work in pastoral ministry, especially on behalf of poor and neglected youth. Catechism classes, schools, sermons, festive recreational parks, homes, boarding schools and institutions...all these make up our main harvest...⁵⁷⁹

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