St. John Bosco 1815-1888
John Melchior Bosco was the son of peasant parents of Piedmont. He was born on August 16th, 1815, just on two months after the battle of Waterloo, into a Europe that was still bleeding from the results of the Napoleonic wars and at the same time beginning to feel the consequences of the industrial revolution. These two factors were largely the cause of most of the evils of his period, and his life was devoted to remedying them, particularly in so far as they affected the young. His early days were spent at Becchi, his birthplace, a small hamlet near Chieri and some twelve miles east of Turin, on the small farm run by his mother with the help of her sons, after the death, in 117, of his father, Francis Bosco.
He was a devout boy. At the age of nine he experienced a dream which was to affect him for the rest of his life. It was in fact the first of several which, occurring at intervals until shortly before his death, were distinguished by their vividness and prophetic nature. This first dream in which he saw wild beasts turned into gentle lambs and unruly disobedient children becoming well behaved, showed him what he must do in life. Ever afterwards he was convinced that he must work for boys as priest and educator. He obtained his schooling at Chieri, working in his spare time to provide board and lodging, and, after a seminary course during which his considerable intellectual talents and astounding memory were revealed, he was ordained priest.
At the hospice known as the 'Convitto Ecclesiastico,' where he now went for a course in pastoral theology, he was taught by St. Joseph Cafasso, and was not uninfluenced by St. Joseph Cottolengo, both of whom--the first by the provision of an educated and zealous clergy, the second by the foundation of a large hospital for the poor and needy--were endeavoring to cope with the urgent problems of the times and place. Visits to the local jails, at the instance of Don Cafasso, showed Don Bosco the magnitude of the problem represented by the many youths whom destitution, the absence of home influence and religious instruction brought rapidly to their present sorry plight.
Don Bosco was not only aware of these youths, others in the city sought him out, as boys were to do all his life long, and he began first at the Convitto and then elsewhere the Sunday meetings which grew into the 'festive oratories' at which religion and recreation, instruction and worship were so blended that none of it was unattractive. It was a full-time occupation for numbers were continually increasing. Many youths were coming into the city to find work at the extensive building then going on, and families were moving in from the country, attracted by the opportunities to be found in the expanding capital.
On leaving the Convitto, Don Bosco, after a short time as chaplain at a girls' orphanage, was able to give his whole time to the service of these lads. After overcoming numerous difficulties he was able to purchase a small house in the quarter of the city known as Valdocco, and there he founded the Oratory of St. Francis of Sales--a hostel for apprentices and schoolboys. Soon the hostel had become a training center and a school--the apprentices adn boys no longer went out to work or class; they were taught under Don Bosco's roof. A church was built, the buildings were enlarged, a great basilica of our Lady, Help of Christians, rose up to dominate the whole of that part of Turin. In the meantime Don Bosco founded the Salesian Congregation and later, in collaboration with St. Mary Mazzarello, a Congregation of nuns to do similar work for girls. With the gradual expansion of the Salesians he undertook work in France and Spain and sent some of his men as missionaries to the Indians of Patagonia. When he died he had under his charge some seven hundred boys in Turin, numerous houses in Italy, all with their 'festive oratories' in addition to other educational work, together with houses abroad. But it was no longer boys out of prison that were being dealt with; Don Bosco's efforts were preventing their being sent there by training them to earn their livings and in the practice of Christianity.
John Bosco is one of those saints who seem to disappear behind their immense achievements; we seek the man and find only what he has done. What was his secret? He possessed the common attributes of the saint--the practice of heroic virtue, assiduous prayer and the rest--but the secret of much of his work, in one sense the modality of his holiness, was his love of youth. Boys took to him because they sensed immediately that he loved them. Of his educational system he himself says that he had none, that he improvised as he went along. That is true, but his guiding principle was love and respect for the boy as a person, with the consequence that he evolved a system of 'preventive' rather than repressive discipline; he insisted, too, long before St. Pius X's decree, on frequent communion but left it to each boy's conscience and attraction, and rigidly excluded 'general communions' and the like where children are almost herded to the sacraments.
He was beset by urgent tasks of all kinds, preaching, running his Congregation, the constant need to raise money, the difficulty of contending with official (both lay and ecclesiastical) opposition, delicate negotiations with an anti-clerical government on behalf of the Holy See; yet he was never put out, never impatient, always smiling, ready to help a boy, hear a confession, go to a sick bed. He never slept more than five hours a night, and often less; but the real secret of his calm, unhurried method of dealing with the many problems that beset him was the realist approach to life that he derived from his peasant origins and his great trust in Providence. 'What you have to do,' he once remarked, 'is to take the burden fairly and squarely on your shoulders; it will soon settle down and you will hardly feel it.' The miracles with which he is credited, and some are certainly authentic, were all due to that trust of his in Providence; it never failed him.
His penance he found in daily life--the constant interruptions and obstacles to be overcome, the daily discomfort of varicose veins, eczema, failing sight. Not long before his death he stumped France to obtain funds for his good works and soon afterwards went to Spain. He died in Turin in 1888; he was quite worn out. His body rests in the great basilica that he built beside those of St. Dominic Savio, his pupil, and St. Mary Mazzarello, his collaborator.
The Saints: A Concise Biographical Dictionary, ed. John Coulson (Angelus, 1957)