1639 Learning to love Don Bosco
austraLasia 1639

Learning to love Don Bosco - activity afoot in the Anglophone regions

EAO/AS/IA: 29th August 2006 --  Most readers would readily understand EAO and AS, the two Salesian regions covering the Asia-Pacific geographical areas.  IA refers to the Salesian Region of Interamerica which is part anglophone, francophone and spanophone (yes there are such creatures!). There is considerable activity afoot to help members of the Salesian Family learn to know and love Don Bosco.
    Other than the more formal occasions of meetings and publications referred to below, a comment in Boscowiki (which you can check out easily enough at the 'click here' also below) is of interest.  It was in reference to the First Asian Missionary Conference which is to be held in Bangkok this coming October.  The wiki contributor puts it thus: re:1561 First Asian Mission Congress I wonder, if we can take advantage of the evangelizing, missionary storytelling in our daily life. Don Bosco was a great story teller and we can get a lot from it! [This is a good idea - and BoscoWiki can also serve as a means for telling those stories].  The comment in parentheses is from your austraLasia coordinator.  It would be another very valuable way of coming to know and love Don Bosco.
    Fr Mike Mendl, New Rochelle, has been in touch with a number of people around anglophone Salesian areas indicating that three items which have been out of print for some time are now being revised with a view to re-printing, and asks for comments, observations from people who have read the earlier editions, which may help the process.  Joseph Aubry's The Spiritual Writings of Don Bosco, a collection of excerpts from original (in translation) texts with brief comment from Aubry; Francis Desramaut's Don Bosco and the Spiritual Life - similar treatment, more focused on its topic, obviously; The Memoirs of the Oratory - non need to give you the author!  This latter item is largely completed, that is, the revision of it, and will be welcomed the moment it comes off the press again. May God speed the effort!
    There's more.  With the commencement of an entire course of Salesian studies set up at the Salesian University in Rome, headed by Fr Aldo Giraudo, a more recent name in Salesian scholarship and worthy successor to the Stella and Braido (who are still studying and producing, incidentally), there has been a felt need for original texts in English.  Readers may be interested to know that the three 'lives' written by Don Bosco, Savio, Magone, Besucco, has recently been re-translated into English.  In fact there was a single available translation of these three lives in English, completed by Fr Wallace Cornell, former provincial of the Australian province and deceased now for some years.  This collection has been long out of print and had certain difficulties: (a) Fr Cornell did not have access at the time to the last editions produced by Don Bosco in his own time - one of the lives ran to five editions and Don Bosco changed details, occasionally quite important ones by way of addition or omission, each time! (b) he left out Don Bosco's footnotes, and in one or two instances Don Bosco's footnotes include other 'lives' which he said he wanted to write but in the end encapsulated in a rather long footnote! (c) added his own comments which while appropriate for his purpose 30 or so years ago, do not belong to a faithful text for scholars and even ordinary readers today.  While decisions regarding the printing of these three texts have yet to be made, there should be no difficulty in providing them digitally to anybody who might want them - we are talking about the common heritage and patrimony of all who want to know and love Don Bosco.
    Fr Giraudo will be holding a session in EAO based on these and other texts.  It will be in Bangkok early next year, very beginning of January in fact. More details on this seminar will be forthcoming.
    And there is activity regarding investigations into Salesian holiness with examples like Convertini (India) and Majcen (Vietnam). More on those later.
   
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