POSTSCRIPT
Unfortunately the Memoirs of the Oratory stops with these murderous
attempts and the story of the mysterious gray
dog. A new phase of Saint John Bosco's life was about begin, that of the
founder. As his dreams about the future of the Oratory had foretold, his first
clerical helpers, and his earliest recruits (Ascanio Savio, Reviglio, Bellia,
astini, Rocchietti) did not stay with him. But some of the ambs did grow up and
turn into shepherds: Buzzetti, Rua, Cagliero, Francesia, Angelo Savio, Bonetti,
and others. The Salesians are probably unique in that the founder shaped lis
"cofounders" right from their boyhood and did not form an association
of some kind with grown men.1
The decade 1854-1864 were the years of founding the Salesian Society.
After night prayers on January 26, 1854, Don
Bosco called the young seminarians Rua, Cagliero, Rocchietti, and
Artiglia to his room. It was three
days j before the feast of Saint Francis de Sales, and the priest I proposed to
the youths that they make promises to work ' together to perform deeds of
charity toward their neighbors, that they might eventually bind themselves by
vows, and that they take the name Salesians. They agreed.2 Their
practice of charity, of course, was focused on the work of the oratories (Valdocco,
Porta Nuova, and Vanchiglia). Don Bosco guided them through conferences,
spiritual direction, confession. They continued their philosophical and theological
studies. In the next few years their group increased, and some began to make
private vows under Don Bosco's guidance.
After almost six years, Don Bosco had with him one mature and experienced
priest, Father Alasonatti, and eighteen youths whom he had trained himself. In
December 1859 he invited them to form a new religious congregation with him to
aim "at the sanctification of each member by mutual assistance" and
"to promote God's glory and the salvation of souls, especially of those in
greater need of instruction and formation." For some ir was really a moment
of decision: "Don Bosco wants to make monks of us all!" (Besides the
vocational implications, there were the political ones. The government had
already expelled all the monastic orders and confiscated their property.)
Impetuous
When the group met on December 18, only two had de-""cided not to
come. Don Bosco, Father Alasonatti, sixteen seminarians, and one layman bound
themselves by vow and formally founded the Society of Saint Francis de Sales.5
Don Bosco bad already drafted a Rule and presented it to Pius IX.
During the next ten years (1865-1875) the Salesians grew and spread. They
won temporary papal approval in 1864 and final approval in 1864. After much
tribulation, the Vatican approved the Rule in 1874. By then bishops and
municipalities from all over northern Italy were asking Don Bosco to establish
schools or oratories for them; Don Bosco and Mary Domenica Mazzarello had
founded the Daughters of Mary Help of Christians; and Don Bosco was beginning to
plan the Society's expansion into France and the foreign missions (which became
realities in 1875),
Don Bosco the builder was at work too. By 1863 the size and scope of the
Oratory had outgrown the Church of Saint Francis de Sales and he began to think
of a monumental church in honor of our Lady under the relatively unknown title
of Help of Christians. With his customary trust in Divine Providence, he began
the work in 1864 and handed the contractor, Charles Buzzetti. the first payment:
eight centesimi. But with abundant miraculous help from heaven ("Every
brick represents a grace from our Blessed Mother"4), the church
was completed and consecrated in 1868.
With similar trust, energy, and heavenly help Don Bosco proceeded to put up
two more great churches in the 1870s and 1880s, one in honor of Saint John the
Evangelist in Porta Nuova. the other —
by papal request — in honor of the Sacred Heart in Rome (opposite the main
train station).
As a young man Don Bosco had thought about going to the foreign missions.
Father Cafasso, happily, discouraged him. But the dream remained. It was more
than a dream, really; for the missions were the subject of many of his prophetic
visions. For instance, when Cagliero was dying of
typhoid in 1854 and Don Bosco was called to anoint him, he suddenly saw
around the boy a crowd of dark-skinned savages from who-knows-where, and a dove
fluttering over the sick boy's head. He understood that Cagliero would recover
and would eventually become a missionary.5 Other dreams seemed to
show him the future fields where his sons and daughters would labor to make good
Christians and good citizens.
Various requests for Salesians came from foreign lands. Don Bosco finally
recognized one that answered to a dream and sent Father Cagliero and nine other
priests and brothers to Buenos Aires in November 1875, with an eye to opening up
missions in the vast wilderness of Patagonia. And so it happened. By 1884
Cagliero was ordained a bishop and dozens of Salesians and sisters were in Argentina,
Chile, Uruguay, and Brazil.
From 1876 to 1887 Don Bosco expanded and consolidated the works which
Divine Providence had entrusted to him. Realizing that lay people were critical
to the apostolate in the modern world, the saint conceived another bold idea —one so bold that, when he incorporated it into his
original Salesian Rule it became a major sticking point as far as the Roman
Curia was concerned. That was to include laymen as full members of the Salesian
Society, without vows and living at home. Anyone who wished to cooperate in
working for the salvation of the young and in spreading good Christian
literature was welcome! To secure the approval of the Rule, Don Bosco finally
had to yield the point. But not the concept. In 1876 he brought it to reality in
a different form, the Association of Salesian Cooperators. (It also included
secular clergy, and indeed Pius IX asked to be enrolled as the first member.) By
the end of the following year they had their own monthly magazine, the Salesian
Bulletin (now published in a dozen languages in thirty-nine different
editions). Although the Cooperators make no vows, in some sense they were the
forerunners of secular institutes of consecrated lay people.
The apostle of youth's dreams continued to guide him in prophetic ways, and
miraculous events became commonplace in his life. His contemporaries coveted
his written and spoken word, even snips of his hair and bits of his clothing.
Don Bosco exclaimed to Father Cagliero, "How wonderful is the Lord, and how
immense his mercy! He chose a peasant boy of Becchi to be his instrument in performing
his wonders before such a host of people."6 In the early i86os
the Salesians at the Oratory began to document virtually everything he said and
did, entrusting the results to Father Lemoyne, who himself made a habit of
"pumping" the saint almost every night for stories about his youth
and the early days of the Oratory. Lemoyne assembled all this, plus the
testimony he gathered from alumni, benefactors, friends from Don Bosco's
youth, and others, into forty-five huge volumes of raw material.
After the saint's death (January 31, 1888), Lemoyne began to edit his
documents into a biography; publication began in 1898 with the first volume of
the Biographical Memoirs. When he died in 1916, he had completed nine
volumes. Fathers Amadei and Ceria finished the work in 1939 except for the index
(volume XX). As was mentioned in the introduction, only the first four of these
deal with the years 1815-1854, the period covered by Don Bosco's autobiography.
The remaining thirty-three years of his life fill volumes V-XVIII (7980 pages) —ample evidence
to how thoroughly the first generation collected anecdotes and letters and
recorded events and conferences. (The nineteenth volume of the Biographical
Memoirs covers the process of canonization, 1888-1934.)
Pope Pius XI canonized Saint John Bosco on Easter Sunday, April i, 1934.
It has been said that it was a great April Fool's joke: how Don Bosco fooled all
those who thought he was crazy! Today the visitor to Saint Peter's Basilica in
Rome may see his statue in the row of the saintly founders a hundred feet above
the floor; it is directly above the bronze statue of Saint Peter and the
medallion commemorating the pontificate of Pius IX, a fitting place for the
defender of Peter's successors and friend of Pius. That, too, Don Bosco once
dreamed, though without at all understanding what it meant; whoever recorded
it thought it so insignificant that there are few details and no date.7
But the greatest monument to Don Bosco is not marble.
Notes
1. See Francis Desrainaut, "The Founding of the Salesian Family
(1841-1876)," trans. Paul Aronica (New Rochclle, 1985); and Joseph Aubry,
"The Role of the Salesians Within the Salesian Family," trains. Paul
Aronica [New Roehclle. 1987), pp. 4-11.
2. BM V, 7-8.
3. BM VI, 180-183,
4. Sec BM VIII, 402-403.
5. KM V, 67-68.
6. 3M XIV, 332; cf. X, 141. 7 MB
XVII, 11-13,
8. Il Giovane provveduto (Turin. 1847), p. 7; quoted in Constitu
tions, article 14.