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STUDI
DON BOSCO’S MISSIONARY CALL AND CHINA
Carlo Socol *
Comparative Chronology:
(A) General Events
1839-1842 1st Opium War:
Treaty of Nanking
1840/09 Martyrdom of Gabriel Perboyre
1843 Cause of beatification
of Perboyre begins
1853-1854 Japan opens to outside world
1856 Martyrdom of Auguste Chapdelaine
1858-1860 2nd Opium War
1860/10 Treaty of Tientsin:
French Protectorate
1862 Canonization of Martyrs
of Nagasaki (1597)
1867 Beatification of Japanese Martyrs
(1617-32)
1867/09 Bishop E. Zanoli
of Hupei visits Valdocco
1869-1870 1st Vatican Council
1870 Bishops from China visit Valdocco
1870 Anti-foreign violence in Tientsin
1873/04 Consecration of Shrine of Zo-sé
(Shanghai)
1874 Anti-foreign violence in Yunnan
1875 Anti-foreign violence in Szechwan
1885-1886 Persecution in Kiangsi
(B) Salesian Events
1841 Don Bosco ordained a priest
1845 1st edition of the Storia Ecclesiastica
1859 Birth of the Salesian Society
1864 Comboni at Valdocco speaks
about Africa
1869 The Holy See approves
the Salesian Society
1869 Mons. Lavigerie invites Salesians
to Algeria
1869-70 3rd Edition of the
Storia Ecclesiastica
1870 Negotiations for San Francisco
1870/07 Comboni’s proposal for Cairo
1871-72 1st missionary dream
1873/10 Negotiations with
Msgr. T. Raimondi begin
1874/04 Salesian Constitutions approved
1875/11 1st Mission to Argentina
1885/07 Dream about Angel of Arphaxad
1886/04 Dream of Barcelona:
Peking, Meaco…
1886/10 Conversation with
A. Conelli in San Benigno
1886 Spiritual Testament
1888/1 Death of Don Bosco
1890 Conelli contacts Rondina
about Macao
* Salesiano, docente di Storia Ecclesiastica presso lo Holy Spirit Seminary di Hong Kong.

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216 Carlo Socol
Preamble
After having established his missions in South America, late in his life
Don Bosco confidently wrote in his Spiritual Testament about the future de-
velopment of Salesian Missions in China:
“Time will come when our missions will be established in China and pre-
cisely in Peking. But let us never forget that we go for poor and abandoned
boys. There, among peoples unknown and ignorant of the true God, you will
see wonders formerly thought incredible, but which almighty God will make
manifest to the world”1.
Don Bosco, who wrote his Spiritual Testament in stages, in all likeli-
hood entered these words in the summer of 1886 in the wake of a dream he
had in Barcelona in the night between 9 and 10 April that had left in him a
deep and emotionally charged impression. In it, from the top of a hill near
Becchi, the land of his first dream, he saw the expansion of Salesian work in
the world spanning from Valparaiso all the way to Peking. What he saw in
this last of his important dreams represented the fulfilment of his apostolic as-
pirations and the field of action God wished to entrust to future generations of
Salesians. How Don Bosco came to express his belief that his work would
one day extend to China is what this essay attempts to explore, beginning
from what has been described as his “missionary call”2.
1 Francesco MOTTO, Memorie dal 1841 al 1884-5-6 pel sac. Gio. Bosco a’ suoi figliuoli
Salesiani [Testamento spirituale], in “Ricerche Storiche Salesiane” (= RSS) 6 (1985) 127.
Quotations in English of original Italian documents or texts are our own translations, unless
otherwise specified.
2 Archival sources:
ASC
Archivio Salesiano Centrale;
APF
Archivio di Propaganda Fide;
AIC
Archivio Ispettoria Cina;
AG-PIME Archivio Generale P.I.M.E.;
HKCDA Hong Kong Catholic Diocesan Archives.
Often quoted printed sources:
OE
Giovanni BOSCO, Opere Edite (Ristampa anastatica), Prima serie, voll. I-XXXVII.
Roma, LAS 1976-1977;
MO
Giovanni BOSCO, Memorie dell’Oratorio di S. Francesco di Sales dal 1815 al
1855, (ed. Eugenio Ceria). Torino 1946;
MOE
John BOSCO, Memoirs of the Oratory. New Rochelle 1999;
E
Giovanni BOSCO, Epistolario, (ed. Eugenio Ceria), vol. I-IV. Torino 1955-1959;
E(m)
Giovanni BOSCO, Epistolario, (ed. F. Motto) vol. I-IV published so far. Roma, LAS
1991-2003.
Often quoted literature:
MB
Giovanni Battista LEMOYNE, Memorie biografiche di Don Giovanni Bosco, vol.
I-IX. San Benigno e Torino 1898-1917; Eugenio CERIA, Memorie biografiche del

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Don Bosco’s missionary call and China 217
1. The missionary call of Don Bosco
Veteran Salesian historians P. Stella, P. Braido and F. Desramaut have
produced syntheses of the life and work of Don Bosco of undisputable
quality, the result of a life-long dedication to a better understanding of the his-
torical Don Bosco and of the Society he founded3. Several other scholars and
researchers have studied his missionary ideal and strategy in some detail4.
And still we do not have a definitive synthesis of this, which Don Bosco him-
self in 1875 termed “il principio di una grande opera”, “the beginning of a
great enterprise” 5.
November 11, 1875 marks the day on which the first Salesian mis-
sionary expedition left Turin for Argentina. The Salesian Society had its Con-
stitutions approved only the previous year. Professed members numbered
beato Giovanni Bosco, vol. XI-XIX. Torino 1930-1939; Angelo AMADEI, Memorie
biografiche di San Giovanni Bosco, vol. X: 1871-1874, Torino 1939.
BM
English translation: Giovanni Battista LEMOYNE, Eugenio CERIA, Angelo AMADEI,
Biographical Memoirs of St. John Bosco. New Rochelle NY, Don Bosco Publi-
cations 1965-2004;
Annali Eugenio CERIA, Annali della Società Salesiana, 4 voll. Torino 1941-1951.
3 Pietro STELLA, Don Bosco nella storia della religiosità cattolica, I, Vita e Opere. Roma,
LAS 1979. Francis DESRAMAUT, Don Bosco en son temps (1815-1888). Torino, SEI 1996.
Pietro BRAIDO, Don Bosco prete dei giovani nel secolo delle libertà, 2 voll. Roma, LAS 2002.
4 Agostino FAVALE, Il progetto missionario di Don Bosco e i suoi presupposti storico-dot-
trinali, in “Quaderni di Salesianum”, Roma, LAS 1976. ID., Le missioni nei primordi della
Congregazione Salesiana, in Pietro SCOTTI (ed.), Missioni Salesiane (1875-1975). Studi in oc-
casione del Centenario. CSSMS Studi e Ricerche 3. Roma, LAS 1977, pp. 13-48; Francis
DESRAMAUT, Il pensiero missionario di Don Bosco dagli scritti e discorsi del 1870-1885, in P.
SCOTTI (ed.), Missioni Salesiane 1875-1975, pp. 49-61; Jesús BORREGO, Il primo iter mission-
ario nel progetto di Don Bosco e nell esperienza concreta di Don Cagliero (1875-1877), in P.
SCOTTI (ed.), Missioni Salesiane 1875-1975, pp. 63-86. Raul A. ENTRAIGAS, Los Salesianos en
la Argentina, I. Buenos Aires 1973; Angel Martin GONZALEZ, Trece escritos ineditos de San
Juan Bosco al consul argentino J. B. Gazzolo. Guatemala 1978; ID., Origen de las Misiones
Salesianas. La Evangelizatión de las gentes según el pensamento de San Juan Bosco.
Guatemala, Istituto Teologico Salesiano 1978; Jesus BORREGO, Primer proyecto patagónico de
Don Bosco, in RSS 8 (1986) 21-72. ID., Estrategia misionera de Don Bosco, in Pietro BRAIDO
(ed.), Don Bosco nella Chiesa a servizio dell’umanità. Studi e testimonianze. Roma, LAS
1987, pp. 143-202; Arthur LENTI, I sogni di Don Bosco. Esame storico-critico, significato e
ruolo profetico per l’America Latina, in Cosimo SEMERARO (ed.), Don Bosco e Brasilia. Pro-
fezia, realtà sociale e diritto. Padova, Cedam 19990, pp. 85-130; Antonio DA SILVA FERREIRA,
Due sogni sulle missioni della Patagonia e dell’America Latina, in RSS 28 (1996) 101-139;
ID., Patagonia. Realtà e mito nell’azione missionaria salesiana. Piccola Biblioteca dell’ISS,
16. Roma, LAS 1995; Jesus BORREGO, Las llamadas “Memorias” del Cardenal Giovanni
Cagliero, in RSS 19 (1991) 295-353. Maria A. NICOLETTI, El discurso misionero salesiano
a través de “Raccolta di vedute della missione salesiana della Patagonia” de Domenico
Milanesio (1904), in RSS 46 (2005) 89-124.
5 MB XI 385.

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218 Carlo Socol
171, a mere 64 of whom were in perpetual vows. A further 116 novices and
aspirants were being formed, a sign of robust growth and vitality: the young
Society was developing fast, no doubt, but it was also running 8 houses, and
so the move was indeed a bold one6. As it turned out, it was the first step of
an amazing expansion destined to bring Don Bosco’s charism in the fol-
lowing decades – during his lifetime and especially after his death – to the
five Continents. Faith, passion for souls and a spirituality of apostolic action
had inspired Don Bosco to send his young and as yet inexperienced disciples
on that brave adventure:
“Il 1875 segnava l’inizio dell’espansione dell’opera di don Bosco oltre i con-
fini italiani in Europa e nell’America latina. Non era una sorpresa per chi
aveva potuto intuire il suo temperamento e la sua fede. Questo nuovo balzo in
avanti era connaturato con la sua indole, la sua impazienza e inquietudine
pastorale, che non gli consentiva di fermarsi ai traguardi raggiunti. Rispon-
deva pure a sue preoccupazioni rese più o meno esplicite: l’istituzione, la
Congregazione, avrebbe potuto correre il rischio dell’appagamento e della
fossilizzazione se non si fosse protesa verso nuovi obiettivi, come avviene –
secondo la sua dottrina spirituale – in ogni cammino di perfezionamento
morale e religioso, che si arrestasse nel compiacimento dei traguardi rag-
giunti: non progredi regredi est” 7.
Don Bosco was a man capable of biding his time, as he showed time and
again, but resting on his laurels was not part of his character. Of course there
were also external elements pressing him on, such as the many legalistic
limits being imposed on him by local civil authorities and by ecclesiastical
ones: the obligation of academic qualifications, school inspections, paralysing
rules on the civil front; rigorous norms in line with those of established Con-
gregations on sacred ordinations, on religious formation, on ecclesiastical cur-
ricula, on the admission to the profession of vows, and the barring of access to
the so-called “privileges” on the ecclesiastical one. It was within this context,
in the years 1874-1875, that the idea of the Salesian Co-operator and expan-
sion abroad, in France and South America, came to fruition. Don Bosco would
direct the French operations personally, making them the object of his special
attention and of frequent visits. As for the American missionary expansion, he
had no choice but to develop new modalities to direct, support and animate it
from a distance, with all the uncertainties that such plan entailed8.
6 These figures show a 16% increase over the previous year, 1874, when there were 148
confreres, of whom only 42 were perpetually professed, and 103 novices and aspirants. MB X
1231; XI 1.
7 P. BRAIDO, Don Bosco prete dei giovani…, vol. II, p. 129.
8 Ibid., pp. 129-130.

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Don Bosco’s missionary call and China 219
In the 1870s frequent requests had reached Don Bosco for the supply of
Salesian personnel to various missions: Cairo in Africa, San Francisco and
Savannah in the United States, Mangalore in India, Hong Kong and China,
and finally Australia. But his tentative plans in those lands did not materi-
alize. “Apart from shortage of personnel, what made him hesitant were the
difficulties created by countries outside Italy’s great migration tides, whose
language and culture were significantly different from the neo-Latin roots of
his prospective mission hands. For this reason he responded with surprising
speed to invitations issuing from Argentina”9.
1.1. Ideal and reality: evolution of a project
That November 11, 1875 opened an entirely new page in the life of the
young Congregation. It may be worth asking what Don Bosco was trying to
achieve by this first sending of his men across the Ocean. The answer to this
question is less straightforward than we might wish or expect it to be. What
Don Bosco intended to do, the moves he actually made and what he eventu-
ally managed to accomplish went through a process of evolution dictated by
the necessities of a reality he only gradually understood, a modus agendi that
seems to have accompanied him throughout his life10. He had accepted to
send his Salesians to tend a public church in the Argentinean capital of
Buenos Aires and run a small boarding school – initially with room for no
more than fifty boarders11 – in the frontier town of San Nicolás de los Ar-
royos, on the banks of the Parana river, within days of receiving an invitation.
His preliminary three point proposal – send some priests to set up a central
house in Buenos Aires, send another small contingent of priests, clerics and
lay brothers to San Nicolás, with the possibility of branching out to other
works “as the Ordinary would think fit” – could scarcely constitute a plan!
For all the intense preparations prior to the departure, the Congregation and
Don Bosco himself had only vague ideas of, and hence were unprepared for
what was awaiting them in Argentina: the one thing that Don Bosco was sure
of, and that his sons soon perceived, was that God wanted them to be “in the
Missions”, whatever that meant, because he never spelled it out in clear,
systematic or univocal terms either12.
9 Ibid., pp. 136-137.
10 Pietro BRAIDO, Il progetto operativo di Don Bosco e l’utopia della società cristiana.
Quaderni di Salesianum, 6. Roma, LAS 1981, p. 5.
11 E III 1453.
12 MB XI 372-390; Don Bosco to Espinosa, 22.12.1875, in E(m) IV, 2043. For Don Bosco’s
idea of “Missions”, see F. DESRAMAUT, Il pensiero missionario di Don Bosco…, pp. 49-61.

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220 Carlo Socol
Contacts had been made through Giovanni Battista Gazzolo, the Argen-
tinean consul in Savona. Through him Don Bosco had offered his readiness to
provide priests to officiate in the Mother of Mercy church in Buenos Aires
and accepted the invitation from the San Nicolás founding committee to run
their school. In his first personal reply to the Buenos Aires diocesan curia he
introduced the Salesian Society as having “the care of poor youth as its pri-
mary objective”, but ready to extend its services to any type of sacred min-
istry. With Don Pietro Ceccarelli, the parish priest of San Nicolás, he was
more specific. He wrote: “…our only desire is to work in the field of sacred
ministry, especially in favour of poor and abandoned youth. Catechism
classes, schools, preaching, Sunday recreation centres, hospices and boarding
schools are our main harvest fields”. And to the San Nicolás committee he
wrote along the same lines13. What was asked of Don Bosco, and the services
he was offering, did not differ in anyway from what he was doing in Turin or
in the boarding schools he had just opened on the Riviera in Liguria, at
Alassio (1870) and Varazze (1872), only he was expanding across the ocean.
But the news which he broke on 28 January 1875 to the rectors gathered
for their annual on-going formation conference focused on “missions in
America”. The following day, the message was relayed to the entire commu-
nity of Salesians and boarders gathered in a carefully choreographed as-
sembly in the main study hall in Valdocco. In its content the message was
plain and objective. The letters from Buenos Aires and San Nicolás were read
out by Mr. Gazzolo: basically they were going to Argentina to take over a
church and a boarding school. But the audience was left in no doubt as to
what the entire proceedings amounted to, as reflected in Don Ceria’s caption,
which read: “Final acceptance of the Missions in South America”, when no
mission had been offered. It was by no means the only metamorphosis of the
project. It is sufficiently clear that it was Don Bosco who had moved the first
step through his intermediary, yet he played things to his advantage by de-
claring he had received an “invitation” from Argentina. Conditions had been
13 MB X 1303-1304; 1306-1307. Don Bosco did, on one instance and in general terms,
refer to the sending of Salesians to tend church and school at San Nicolás as “Missione di Sale-
siani”. Don Bosco to Ceccarelli, 25.12.1874, E(m) IV, 2048.
Giovanni Battista Gazzolo (1827-1895) was born in Liguria. He made a career at sea,
reaching the position of captain. In 1858 he emigrated to Argentina, where he taught (1860-
1863) and was appointed head Librarian at the University of Buenos Aires (1863-1868). As Ar-
gentinean consul in Savona (1869-1895) he promoted Italian emigration to Argentina.
Pietro Ceccarelli (1842-1893) was born in Modena and held degrees in theology and
canon law. In 1871 he left for Argentina and was parish priest of San Nicolás de los Arroyos
from 1873 to 1893, when he returned to his native town, where he died shortly thereafter. Don
Bosco had made his acquaintance before he left for Argentina. E(m) III, 2043, 2074.

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Don Bosco’s missionary call and China 221
put and accepted, he said, with one reserve, i.e. the approval of the Holy Fa-
ther, when he knew this was all but assured. In the words of Desramaut, Don
Bosco had treated his boys and confreres to a piece of sleight of hand without
their knowing it: the Missions appeared out of nowhere. All, even the
doubters, were left ecstatic and were won over to the project14. A few days
later he put his vision into words in a circular letter addressed to all the mem-
bers of the Society, canvassing for volunteers: “Among the many proposals
received to establish missions in foreign countries – he wrote – the one from
Argentina seems to be the best. Apart from some civilized areas, immense ter-
ritories in that country are inhabited by savage tribes, among whom, by the
grace of God, the Salesians can exercise their zeal”15. So, there we have it: the
allure of engaging in the evangelization of “savage tribes”, a plan he had in
mind and that went well beyond what was being offered. In the months to
come he would speak more and more often of “savages”.
At this stage the Archbishop of Buenos Aires was not aware of – and
hence had not agreed to – any “foreign missions” plan, but Don Bosco went
ahead organizing what one could argue was the vaguely worded third item of
the three-point plan he had submitted to the curia, the “other works as the Or-
dinary would think fit” he was ready to engage in. And he did it with his
usual energy and determination. On 31 August 1875 he wrote to the Prefect of
Propaganda Fide, Card. Alessandro Franchi describing his acceptance of the
San Nicolás school precisely to serve as a base for the “missions”. It being
the first time that the Salesian Congregation was “opening houses in the for-
eign missions” he asked for the departing Salesians – and obtained – the priv-
ileges normally granted to apostolic missionaries16. Don Bosco got recogni-
tion, but did not get the subsidies he had hoped for, since Argentina did not
come under the Sacred Congregation of Propaganda Fide. Nor did he obtain
any subsidy from the Lyon-based Association for the Propagation of the
Faith, because in their reckoning his was not a “mission”. During the summer
he handpicked the ten who would make up the first band of missionaries. As
the day drew near, the Catholic weekly L’Unità Cattolica announced the de-
parture of the “Salesian missionaries” 17. At the solemn and moving departure
ceremony on November 11 Don Bosco’s speech was centered around the
14 MB XI 143-145; F. DESRAMAUT, Don Bosco en son temps…, pp. 956-957.
15 Circolare di Don Bosco ai Soci Salesiani, dated 5 February 1875, in MB XI 143.
16 E(m) IV, 2178. Cardinal Alessandro Franchi (1819-1878) was prefect of Propaganda
Fide from 1874 to 1878.
17 “L’Unità Cattolica” of 6 agosto 1876, quoted in P. BRAIDO, Don Bosco prete dei gio-
vani…, vol. II, pp. 146 and 148.

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222 Carlo Socol
theme of the universal mission entrusted by Our Lord to the Apostles and the
entire Church, to which the expedition about to set sail was the response by
the young Congregation. He spoke of the great shortage of priests in Ar-
gentina, of the needs of Italian immigrant families and the work of evange-
lization and civilization among the large tribes of “savages” of Patagonia and
the Pampas that awaited the missionaries. The two houses of Buenos Aires
and San Nicolás did not feature in the speech.
The rationale behind this shift in emphasis is explained by Don Cesare
Chiala, the “publicist” of the Salesian Missions in South America. In 1876 he
wrote:
“One should notice that at that time three proposals were put to the Salesian
Congregation, all of them attractive: the savages in India, in Australia and in
Patagonia […]. Patagonia was the preferred choice. But since the missionaries
who in the past attempted to penetrate those tribes were almost all victims of
those men-eaters, a new plan was drawn up: to set up schools and boarding
houses in the towns bordering with the savages; accept also their children, in
order to learn their language, customs and traditions, and in such a way set up
social and religious relationships. It was hence necessary to open a boarding
school in Buenos Aires as a centre of communications. Very handy was also
the offer of a school in San Nicolás”18.
In Chiala’s account, which echoes a dream Don Bosco had revealed that
year19, the Mother of Mercy Church had disappeared, while the San Nicolás
school is mentioned as an accessory: the “savages” were centrepiece. The
project had become, intentionally at least, one of missio ad gentes in its most
classic meaning, albeit with a novel methodology. Why the savages, one
might ask? “In general always keep in mind that God wants us to direct
our efforts towards the Pampas and the Patagonians and towards poor and
abandoned children”, Don Bosco recommended Don G. Cagliero20. It was a
18 Cesare CHIALA, Da Torino alla Repubblica Argentina. Lettere dei Missionari Sale-
siani. Letture Cattoliche. Torino 1876, pp. 21-22. Don Cesare Chiala (1837-1876) was one of
the first boys to attend the Valdocco Oratory. His role as “publicist” of the missions consisted
in editing letters coming from the missions for publication. Cronichetta ASC, A0000105, p. 7;
E II, 1403, 1449.
19 For this “dream of 1871-1872”, the first missionary dream, see below on pp. 28ff.
20 Don Bosco to Cagliero, 01.08.1876, E III, 1477.
Giovanni Cagliero (1838-1926), first Salesian bishop and cardinal, was one of the first
boys of Don Bosco and decided to stay with him. He is considered one of the founders of the
Salesian Society. He obtained a doctorate in Sacred Theology from the University of Turin in
1863, having been ordained the previous year. He was chosen to head the first group of mis-
sionaries who departed for Argentina in 1875. From 1884 to 1904 he was Vicar Apostolic of
Patagonia. He returned to Italy, was made a cardinal by Benedict XV and, as a member of the
Congregation of Propaganda Fide, was instrumental in obtaining the Vicariate Apostolic of

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Don Bosco’s missionary call and China 223
matter of preferential choice: “The world will always welcome us as long as
all our concern is for the savages, for poor children, for those members of
society most in danger…”, he would explain late in his life in his Spiritual
Testament21.
That was the horizon in 1876. Don Bosco did not rest until he
achieved his goal of obtaining an independent mission territory in Patagonia
and Tierra del Fuego. The metamorphosis of his plan in action right from its
start, and the different messages he would convey at the same time to dif-
ferent audiences or people, may be explained by any one or all of the fol-
lowing factors, which one can actually detect in Don Bosco’s correspon-
dence, where past and present, real and virtual, fact and fantasy sometimes
mingle freely: (1) Don Bosco, unable to grasp the full implications and op-
portunities of his swift decision, allowed himself to be guided by circum-
stances and adopted a step by step approach22. (2) Don Bosco’s decision was
quick but not sudden: for a long time he actually had harboured a missionary
vocation, which was kept alive and directed by recurring dreams and signs, so
that, when the occasion presented itself, he knew he had to go for it and
played his cards with wisdom and skill: his contemporaries would essentially
subscribe to this view. (3) Flexibility and diversified propaganda were part of
a carefully arranged effort aimed at attracting new vocations and securing the
financial support of various benefactors and institutions, both being major
worries: Don Bosco soon realized that without a Vicariate Apostolic of his
own in Patagonia, Propaganda Fide, as he wrote to Don G. Costamagna,
“gives us nothing”23.
In April 1876 Don Bosco would insist that the primary objective of the
expedition had been and was the evangelization of the Indians24. To reach it
he would push with energy and passion, but also with the view blurred by dis-
tance and an imagination fed by the often inadequate literature he consulted:
Shiu Chow (China) for the Salesian Congregation in 1917. In 1920 he was assigned to the dio-
cese of Frascati and died in Rome in 1926.
21 F. MOTTO, Memorie dal 1841 al 1884-5-6…, p. 127.
22 F. DESRAMAUT, Don Bosco en son temps…, p. 960.
23 Don Bosco to Costamagna, 12.11.1880, in E III, 2108. See also Don Bosco to Fran-
chi 31.08.1875, and Don Bosco to Oeuvre de la Propagation de la Foi, in E(m) IV, 2178,
2223, 2227.
Giacomo Costamagna (1846-1921) entered the Oratory at the age of twelve and studied
music under G. Cagliero. He professed in 1867, was ordained a priest in 1868 and was spiritual
director of the Daughters of Mary Help of Christians from 1874 to 1877,when he left for
America. He was Provincial of Buenos Aires (1880-1894) and Vicar Apostolic of Méndez y
Gualaquiza in Ecuador in a rather hostile environment. He resigned in 1918.
24 Don Bosco to Cagliero, 27.04.1876 and 01.08.1876, E III, 1445, 1477.

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224 Carlo Socol
and so the meek savage would become the ferocious savage or vice versa, ac-
cording to the perception of the moment25. Before he planned a new, indepen-
dent mission territory for the Salesians to exercise the ministry on their own,
he even went so far as to suggest a project to the Italian government to estab-
lish an Italian colony in Patagonia, which he thought was res nullius, claimed
by no country in particular26. He had originally envisaged a blitz-like mission
for Cagliero: he gave his chosen leader till 1877 – less than two years! – to
establish the American enterprise; he then had to return to take charge of the
Indian mission which he had accepted from the Holy See for 1878 from
among several proposals that had been put to him. Both Pius IX and Card.
Franchi had come forward with proposals for Asia, with the Prefect of Propa-
ganda apparently trying to induce Don Bosco to abandon his project of a
Patagonian mission: plans were underway – and would be carried out in the
following years – to subdivide some of China’s Vicariates Apostolic, as a re-
sult of which some of the new or old jurisdictions would be vacant. One had
been offered to Don Bosco27. For a while he thought it possible – and repeat-
edly wrote about the possibility – to launch forays on two fronts, in America
and in Asia, and thus embrace the whole world, in one go28.
The propaganda effort at times would get out of hand and reflect fantasy
rather than reality, to the dismay of Don Cagliero and Don Luigi Lasagna
(1850-1895) who provided more accurate information, called for prudence
and suggested a change in timing and priorities: the Salesians were already
overstretched, with Don Giovanni Battista Baccino (1843-1877) soon dying
of overexertion, and the work at hand among the immigrants, compared with
the launching of the Patagonian mission, appeared all the more pastorally ur-
gent, because, having left their home country, these people were at risk of
“becoming themselves savages” if their spiritual needs were left unattended29.
25 F. DESRAMAUT, Don Bosco en son temps…, p. 958; P. BRAIDO, Don Bosco prete dei
giovani…, vol. II, p. 151; E III 1453.
26 J. BORREGO, Primer proyecto..., pp. 28-33, 39-42.
27 E III, 52; MB XII 192. Between 1878 and 1882 four new vicariates were created in
China. Cf Joseph DE MOIDREY, La Hiérarchie Catholique en Chine, en Corée et au Japon
(1307-1914). Zikawei, Imprimerie de l’Orphelinat de Tousewe 1914, p. 258.
28 Don Bosco to Cagliero, 27.04.1876 in E III, 1445; also ibid. 1435, 1511, 1517, 1526,
1534, 1548, 1555, 1559. In a series of letters to Don Bosco between May and December 1876
Cagliero delicately objected to the plan as impracticable. J. BORREGO, Il primo iter mission-
ario…, p. 77. By May 1877 the plan to send people to Asia at this stage had been effectively
called off. Don Bosco to Cagliero, 12.05.1877, E III, 1586.
29 J. BORREGO, Il primo iter missionario…, pp. 66, 80. On Baccino (1843-1877), Jesús
BORREGO, Giovanni Battista Baccino. Estudio y edición de su Biografia y Epistolario. Roma,
LAS 1977.
Luigi Lasagna (1850-1895) became acquainted with Don Bosco in 1862 and decided to

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Don Bosco’s missionary call and China 225
Strategies changed. Eventually in 1883 Don Bosco obtained the mission terri-
tories he had strenuously sought since 1875: the Vicariate Apostolic of
Northern and Central Patagonia, which ran effectively only from 1885 to
1904, with Giovanni Cagliero as its first Vicar Apostolic; and the Prefecture
Apostolic of Southern Patagonia and Tierra del Fuego, with Mons. Giuseppe
Fagnano (1844-1916) at the helm. Yet even in Don Bosco’s own lifetime the
work of the Congregation was eventually carried out mainly through
boarding schools, eleven of them, strategically positioned in Argentina,
Uruguay, Brazil, Chile and Ecuador. For all the effort he put, Don Bosco’s
original plan for the “savages” never materialized in a substantial way. Re-
touched by circumstances and field experience, the plan that the Congrega-
tion inherited from her dynamic founder came to resemble more and more the
strategy adopted by another dynamic founder, Ignatius of Loyola: the multi-
plication of schools, without, however, missing the chance of courageous
forays in the field of direct mission work at the service of peoples in need of
evangelization and human development30.
1.2. Missionary expansion or geographical universalism?
There is little doubt that by sending his sons to America Don Bosco an-
swered a missionary call. How far this was his personal call remains to be
seen: it is a fact that Don Bosco never left for the missions. And yet the deci-
sion to start mission work was his. As the preparations were being made and
the first group of Salesians set sail for Argentina to begin their work it cer-
tainly would appear that his call was gradually becoming inseparable from
that of the Society he had founded: the plan he launched in November 1875
moulded the face and destiny of the Salesian Society, while the latter’s hard
move to Valdocco. He professed as a Salesian in 1868, was ordained in 1873 and left for
Uruguay in 1876, where he successfully established several houses prior to extending Salesian
work to Brazil. He was made a bishop in 1893 and in this capacity exercised the role of medi-
ator in several Latin American countries. He died in a train crash in Brazil.
30 F. DESRAMAUT, Il pensiero missionario di Don Bosco…, pp. 58-61. See also P. BRAIDO,
Don Bosco prete dei giovani…, vol. II, pp. 136-142. Braido speaks of the mission efforts 1874-
1876 as: “Effective implantation among immigrants and locals and a tendency [it. tensione]
towards missions”.
Giuseppe Fagnano (1844-1916) first worked as a Red Cross volunteer in the army. He
professed as a Salesian in 1864, was ordained a priest in 1868 and left for Argentina with the
first expedition in 1875. He was first rector at San Nicolás and then at Patagones. As Prefect
Apostolic of Southern Patagonia and Tierra del Fuego (1883-1912) he was remarkable for
establishing the mission there and for defending the indigenous tribes. He died in San-
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226 Carlo Socol
earned field experience, sifting dream from reality, gave concrete expression
to its founder’s intuition and tireless drive.
As invitations to expand abroad or provide personnel for the missions
began to arrive, in the audience of 28 June 1871 Don Bosco sought the advice
of Pius IX as to whether he should accept these invitations, or should rather
concentrate on reinforcing the work of the Salesian Society in Italy. The ad-
vice he got was that he should give attention to the latter31. Up until at least
1874 there is no evidence of a Congregational mission plan. Perhaps it was
not called for, as given the intensely missionary climate of the 19th century it
was natural for newly founded religious Congregations to join in mission
work, as Don Bosco had already noted of several young Congregations in the
1845 edition of his Storia Ecclesiastica (his Ecclesiastical History)32. But
was he aware, as some authors affirm, of the Holy See’s “explicit desire” that
all new Congregations should include and list mission work among their
objectives33? In this respect it is quite significant that “foreign missions” do
not feature in the Constitutions for which Don Bosco secured final approval
on April 3, 1874, the objectives of the Salesian Society being therein de-
scribed as “every sort of spiritual and material love towards the young, espe-
cially the poor ones, as well as the education of the young clergy”. These
Constitutions, unchanged throughout Don Bosco’s life, list oratories, hos-
pices, trade schools, care of vocations, the formation of rural masses,
preaching to the people and the spreading of good books as special works
through which the Salesians would exercise their apostolate. Foreign mis-
sions are not among them. Four General Chapters were celebrated during
Don Bosco’s lifetime (1877, 1880, 1883 and 1886): not one of them tabled
the matter for discussion34. It was the 1904 Chapter that approved a set of Or-
ganic Deliberations and inserted “foreign missions” in a refurbished list of
activities that the Congregation would promote to reach what remained her
sole objective: charity towards poor and abandoned youth. That is when,
under the leadership of Don Michele Rua, the Society Don Bosco had
founded and formed around the Oratory matures as a fully fledged Congrega-
31 MB X 433, 1355.
32 Giovanni BOSCO, Storia Ecclesistica ad uso delle scuole, utile per ogni ceto di per-
sone. Torino 1845, pp. 379. Edizione anastatica in Opere Edite I, p. 537.
33 A. FAVALE, Il progetto missionario di Don Bosco…, p. 910; ID., Le missioni nei pri-
mordi della Congregazione…, pp. 19, 25, 45; Natale CERRATO, Vi presento Don Bosco. Torino,
Elledici 2005, p. 240.
34 Acts of General Chapters 1-4 in OE XXIX, pp. 377-472; XXXIII, pp. 1-96; XXXVI,
pp. 253-280.

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Don Bosco’s missionary call and China 227
tion35. Equally revealing is the fact that while Don Bosco in the early months
of 1874 was in Rome struggling to gain his independence from the jurisdic-
tion of the local bishop, and to achieve this he stressed the imminent expan-
sion of the Congregation in Asia, Africa and America, he described this as
“opening houses” overseas, not as starting mission work36. Of mission work
he began to speak – as we have seen – in 1875, at the launching of the Argen-
tinean enterprise.
And yet the bulk of the work the Salesians were doing in America to-
wards the end of the 19th century did not differ much from what they were
doing in Europe, prompting one Don Pietro Colbachini (1845-1901), a Scal-
abrini missionary, to publicly raise the issue whether Salesian work in
America could be called “mission work” at all, the perception being that it
could not. The answer given in time would be that the typical Salesian work
with the young was another way of understanding and undertaking mission
work37. Perspectives would not quickly change: in the early part of the 20th
century Economer General Don Arturo Conelli was arguing in the Superior
Chapter that “our Congregation is for education rather than evangelization”38.
In times closer to us the Salesians could confidently state that “the Con-
gregation was born and grew up and has always moved forward as a mis-
sionary congregation”39: expressions such as this have to be understood in the
light of present day debate and hence they may be taken to mean that the
Congregation has always kept alive its missionary ideal. Indeed, manuals of
mission history refer to Don Bosco’s idea and praxis as “missionary orienta-
35 Giovanni BOSCO, Costituzioni della Società di S. Francesco di Sales 1858-1875, testi
critici a cura di Francesco Motto. Roma, LAS 1982, pp. 73-79; Deliberazioni dei Capitoli Gen-
erali della Pia Società Salesiana “da ritenersi come organiche”. Torino [1904], p. 8; Lettere
circolari di Don Rua ai Salesiani. Torino 1965, pp. 331-334 and in particolar the circular letter
of 29 September 1905, Le deliberazioni organiche canonicamente approvate, pp. 397-399.
36 Cenno istorico sulla Congregazione di S. Francesco di Sales e relativi schiarimenti.
Roma, Tipografia Poliglotta della S.C. di Propaganda 1874. Con approvazione dell’Autorità
Ecclesiastica. OE XXV (1872-1875) p. 250. Positio, ibid., pp. 379 e 383 e MB X 945, 947.
37 J. BORREGO, Estrategia misionera de Don Bosco…, pp. 199-201.
Pietro Colbachini (1845-1901), “classic” Scalabrini missioner, a native of Bassano (Vi-
cenza, Italy), a man of action and ideas: with the help of a group of immigrant farmers he
cleared a piece of Brazilian forest, divided the land among them and built the church. He
founded the town of New Bassano (1897), of which he was founder, pastor, mayor, and pro-
moter of agriculture, commerce, co-operatives and school. He died exclaiming: I die happy.
See Silvano GUGLIELMI, Un esodo e la sua guida. Breve biografia del beato Giovanni Battista
Scalabrini, padre dei migranti, 1839-1905. Biography on line.
38 Verbali delle riunioni capitolari - 28 ottobre 1919 (Vol. IV) in ASC, D872, p. 7.
39 Luigi RICCERI, Le missioni, strada al rinnovamento, in ACS 267, luglio 1972, p. 14.
The letter is essentially a charismatic reading of the Salesian missionary enterprise, there in-
cluded historical data.

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228 Carlo Socol
tion of a non-missionary institute”40. Mission to the young, as the original and
primary objective, and missio ad gentes, an acquired field of action, now rec-
ognized as one of the Congregation’s standard works: the fact that these two
elements have interacted since the debut of the overseas expansion of the So-
ciety was bound to leave a fundamental ambiguity as to which of the two and
what methodology should prevail in mission lands. The tension, by no means
an isolated phenomenon, would resurface also in China, where it affected the
way work was conceived and developed. The two are not mutually exclusive:
Don Bosco’s overseas enterprise could be seen, and was historically seen, ei-
ther as the launching of foreign missions or the beginning of an expansion of
youth work to reach geographical universalism41. Given the prevailing praxis
of a progressive elaboration and execution of initiatives and projects rather
than the pursuit of well defined objectives, as was the case also in the So-
ciety’s overseas expansion, the dilemma may, in the end, be a false one: rather
than missionary expansion or geographical universalism it might be proper to
speak of missionary expansion and geographical universalism. The existence
of a double movement, however, is a reality and the perception of how the
two work together has a bearing on our understanding of Don Bosco’s vision
and enterprise also regarding China.
1.3. The missionary call of Don Bosco: revisiting the sources
Those who lived with Don Bosco for years and years, who heard him
tell stories about his desire as a youth to go to the missions, or entertain the
young with episodes culled from missionary literature, or who eyed the geog-
raphy books that lay on his desk; those who packed the study hall the day he
announced the acceptance of the two invitations from America, or witnessed
the moving send off on that 11 November 1875 or the intensity of his zeal in
organizing the new enterprise, swore that a special fire was burning in his
heart: his passion for mission work, onto which he had launched his young
Society and for which he had conscripted his most brilliant men, was no
sudden flame; it had been burning since the days of his youth. Traditional
Salesian historiography has maintained, not without reason, that Don Bosco’s
missionary ideal is the natural development of an old aspiration he always
40 Jesús LOPEZ-GAY, Storia delle Missioni. Schemi per un corso triennale. Roma, Gre-
goriana 1983, p. 94.
41 Compare the 1875 developments headlined in Ceria (“Final acceptance of the missions
in South America”) in MB XI 142, with Braido’s (“Towards geographical universalism, 1875-
1877”) in P. BRAIDO, Don Bosco prete dei giovani…, vol. II, p. 129.

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Don Bosco’s missionary call and China 229
kept alive. In Ceria’s classical analysis, by no means the only one, “the mis-
sionary ideal in Don Bosco grew, one could say, together with him. At first it
was an interior voice calling him to bring the Gospel to pagan lands; subse-
quently it became a fire of zeal, ignited by the desire to extend the activity of
his sons to the mission field. This second aspiration took over from the other
once he realized that the path to the Missions had been closed to him”42. Bi-
ographers and scholars have diligently scanned his early formative years in
search of evidence in support of their intuition. However, interesting as the
evidence gathered may seem it is nonetheless mostly episodic, often circum-
stantial and in many cases it has never been subjected to critical verification
and evaluation, leaving us uncertain as to what conclusions one can accu-
rately draw from it.
Two episodes regarding Giovanni Bosco’s vocational discernment re-
quire attention. In April 1834, when still a student of humanities, Giovanni
applied to join the Friars Minor at their Our Lady of the Angels convent in
Turin, induced to do so by lack of financial means. He was accepted. Pied-
mont’s Reformed Franciscans dedicated themselves to mission work in
America, the Holy Land and China. Did this in some way indicate that
Giovanni – in his biographer’s words – “yearned for” the missions? The
source of the information is Don Bosco himself, who revealed that the diffi-
culties he had encountered in following his vocation were of a financial na-
ture. Joining the diocesan clergy would place a considerable burden on his
family, especially on his mother. This had been a major factor in his decision
to seek other avenues to follow God’s call. As a matter of fact he changed his
mind after careful consideration of his true vocation and the advice of Don
Giuseppe Cafasso, and after his parish priest, Don Antonio Cinzano, and
some generous Castelnuovesi offered him financial support to enter the
diocesan seminary43.
Some ten years later, as he was about to complete his post-ordination
pastoral course at the Convitto Ecclesiastico in Turin during the years 1841-
1844, just as the dream about his vocation was coming back to him, Don
Bosco again found himself at a crossroad. Uncertain as to what his next step
should be, he had given some thought to joining the Congregation of the
Oblates of the Blessed Virgin Mary, who had just been entrusted with a mis-
42 E. CERIA, Annali I, 245. See also A. FAVALE, Le missioni nei primordi della Con-
gregazione…, p. 44. A more nuanced assessment in Morand WIRTH, Da Don Bosco ai nostri
giorni tra storia e nuove sfide (1815-2000). Roma, LAS 2000, p. 333.
43 MOE 110-118; MO 80; P. STELLA, Don Bosco nella storia…, p. 45; MB I 303-304,
327-328.

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230 Carlo Socol
sion in Burma. He had developed more than a passing relationship with the
Oblates, who had a house next to the Convitto and had the pastoral care of La
Consolata, the famed Turin shrine of Our Lady of Consolation. Don Bosco’s
resolve must have been a serious one, since he had started – perhaps at the
prompting of the Oblates – to study the Spanish and English languages. When
he turned to Don Cafasso for advice, his spiritual director, “discerning and
farsighted in judging men”, convinced him to turn away from his purpose and
showed him his field of work among the poor youth of Turin. This Don
Bosco told some of his first young followers on 7 May 186144. The episode
occurred in 1844, some three years after his encounter with Bartolomeo
Garelli (8 December 1841), when his first oratory (1842) had been running
for two years and before he took up his post as chaplain at the Shelter of mar-
chioness Giulia Falletti di Barolo (September-October 1844). His biographer
affirms of him – not without some rhetoric – that never “did he abandon the
idea of becoming a missionary”. Almost in the same breath, though, the same
biographer notes that “other ideas that kept cropping up gave him no rest”,
especially the fact that “he believed and felt that he was called to the religious
life”. His eventual choice is a clear indicator of his true vocation. Looking
back in retrospective Don Bosco himself noted how close he had come to be-
coming a missionary, had he not been helped to discern what God really
called him to45.
Don Bosco found his mission in the outskirts of Turin among young im-
migrants: some of his friends observed how commendable his work was and
comparable to that in the foreign missions46. He was by no means indifferent
to the missionary dimension of the Church, which then was going through a
veritable revival under the impulse initiated by Gregory XVI (1831-1846),
consolidated by Pius IX (1846-1878) and his long-serving Prefect of Propa-
ganda (1856-1873), Card. Alessandro Barnabò, and strengthened by the cli-
mate and the discussions – rather than by concrete directives, which did not
materialize – of the 1st Vatican Council (1869-1870). Don Bosco himself
chronicled this revival in the 1869-1870 edition of his Storia Ecclesiastica:
the return of the ancient orders, suppressed by the French Revolution, to mis-
sion work; the birth of new ones; the zeal of missionaries and the heroic wit-
ness of martyrs; the launching of institutions like the Association for the
Propagation of the Faith and the Holy Childhood, genial in the simplicity of
their organization and modern in the use of printed materials, the famed
44 MB II 202-204. Paolo CALLIARI, Oblati di Maria Vergine, in DIP VI, pp. 634-637.
45 MB II 201, 203-205; MOE 187-208.
46 MOE 276.

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Don Bosco’s missionary call and China 231
Annals of the Propagation of the Faith, and extremely successful in enlisting
grassroots faithful to offer spiritual and financial support to the missions47.
This fairly comprehensive description of the missionary revival of the 19th
century Church, already fully under way during the pontificate of Gregory
XVI, stands in sharp contrast with his woefully inadequate presentation of the
phenomenon 15 years earlier, in the first edition of his Storia Ecclesiastica,
which appeared in 1845. Gregory’s eventful pontificate was then drawing to a
close and yet Don Bosco shows he has only a vague grasp of his intensely
missionary initiatives. All he manages is to recall, in very general and stereo-
typed terms, how “through his trust in God, Gregory was able to overcome all
troubles, so that his subjects could live in peace, religion could triumph and
the Gospel expand to the remotest corners of the earth”. Of the many things
that made Gregory’s pontificate “glorious” he mentions his approval of three
religious orders: the Society [of Sisters] of the Sacred Heart, the Sisters
Faithful Companions of Jesus, both French and dedicated to the education of
young girls, and the Institute of Charity, of Antonio Rosmini48. Of these three
he notes the early expansion in mission lands. He then goes on to describe in
some detail the cruel martyrdom of Charles Cornay, who worked in Indochina
“for the conversion of those natives (it. selvaggi)” and where he died a martyr
in 1837; and that of Gabriel Perboyre, missionary to China, who exercised the
“sacred ministry among those barbarous nations”, where he met his mar-
tyrdom in 1840. There is not even an attempt to introduce the martyrdom of
the two missionaries as examples of missionary zeal and dedication: they are
just “other facts that occurred during the pontificate of Gregory XVI”49. Of
47 Giovanni BOSCO, Storia Ecclesiastica ad uso delle scuole, utile per ogni ceto
di persone. Torino 1871, pp. 351-356. Edizione anastatica in Opere Edite Torino 18714,
pp. [351-356].
48 ID., Storia Ecclesiastica ad uso delle scuole, utile per ogni ceto di persone. Torino
1845, pp. 377-379. Edizione anastatica in Opere Edite I, pp. [537-537]. The Society of the Sa-
cred Heart was founded by Madeleine Sophie Barat (+1865) in 1800. During the lifetime of
the foundress it spread to Africa, to North and South America. The Faithful Companions of
Jesus were founded in Amiens (France) by Marie Madeleine Victoire de Bonnault d’Houet
(+1858) in 1820 and dedicated themselves to the education of children. They soon spread
abroad, including England and Scotland. Also the Institute of Charity, founded by Antonio
Rosmini (+1855) in 1828, soon sent missionaries to England (1835), considered mission land
and hence under the Congregation of Propaganda. NCE XII, 697, 822-823; XIII, 262-263. Also
Clemente RIVA, Istituto della Carità, in DIP5, pp. 133-136; Paolo CALLIARI, Fedeli Compagne
di Gesù, in DIP3, pp. 1429-1431; Jeanne DE CHARRY, Società del S. Cuore di Gesù, “S. Sofia
Barat”, in DIP8, pp. 1683-1688. In another context the Storia also mentions the Oblates of the
Blessed Virgin Mary and their mission. Ibid., pp. 374 [532].
49 G. BOSCO, Storia Ecclesiastica (1845)…, pp. 376-383, OE I, pp. [534-543].
Charles Cornay (1809-1837), a member of the Paris Society of Foreign Missions, meant
to work in Sichuan (China) but had to settle to work in Vietnam. Arrested, he was kept in a

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232 Carlo Socol
the two, Perboyre had particularly caught Don Bosco’s attention: he report-
edly used to keep a picture of him in his study50. The fact that in this first edi-
tion of the Storia Ecclesiastica one finds only faint hints regarding the mis-
sions is instructive and forces us to reassess our appraisal of Don Bosco’s
grasp of the 19th century missionary revival during his formative years and
early priesthood.
The need for a prudent reassessment is reinforced by another fact. Don
Bosco read the Annals of the Association for the Propagation of the Faith,
which were published in Italian as from March 1837. Some of his biographers
wrote that he did so assiduously. We are in no position to verify that state-
ment, but we know for sure that he borrowed from the Annals to compile his
Storia Ecclesiastica both in 1845 and in 1870. Nor do we have reasons to
doubt at least part of the testimony of Don Giacomo Bellia, who said or wrote
that from 1848, as a young man, he used to bring copies of the Annals to Don
Bosco in the dining room who had them read publicly and who then ex-
pressed the desire to send clerics and priests to evangelize Patagonia and the
Tierra del Fuego. It is, however, highly unlikely that Don Bosco could have
conceived the idea of sending missionaries to Patagonia at such an early
stage. As a matter of fact, the Annals from 1848 to 1868 never mention Patag-
onia. As it often happens, Bellia’s testimony is a case of unconsciously
reading early beginnings in the light of later developments, a tendency that
affects the objectivity of one’s recollection of the past51.
Don Bosco and Canon Giuseppe Ortalda were friends, but their contacts
– at least judging from references found in Don Bosco’s Epistolario and in the
Biographical Memoirs – could be best described as occasional. Ortalda was
director of the diocesan council of the Association of the Propagation of the
Faith from 1851 to 1880 and an active promoter of “Apostolic Schools” or
cage for three months, regularly beaten, finally beheaded and his body hacked to pieces. He
was beatified in 1900 and canonized in 1988.
Gabriel Perboyre (1802-1840) entered the Congregation of the Mission in 1818 and was
ordained priest in 1825. He taught theology and was rector of the seminary before departing
for China in 1835 to replace his younger brother, who had died on his way before reaching
China. He was denounced to the authorities by one of his catechumens, was tortured and died a
martyr on 11 September 1840. In 1843 Gregory XVI directed that his cause of beatification
should begin. He was beatified in 1889 and canonized in 1996. Niccolò DEL RE, Perboyre Gio-
vanni Gabriele, in Enciclopedia Sanctorum X. Roma 1968, coll. 484-5.
50 Giovanni Battista FRANCESIA, Vita breve e popolare di D. Giovanni Bosco. S. Benigno
Canavese 19114, p. 262. The particolar is reported also in Carlo SALOTTI (card.), Il Santo Gio-
vanni Bosco. Torino 19343, p. 413, and Auguste AUFFRAY, Un grand Éducateur. Le Bien-
heureux Don Bosco (1815-1888). Paris, E. Vitte 1929, p. 409, who dates the episode 1855.
51 P. BRAIDO, Il progetto educativo di Don Bosco…, p. 5. The Bellia testimony in
MB III 363.

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Don Bosco’s missionary call and China 233
minor seminaries for missionary vocations. One such school was located right
next to Don Bosco’s Valdocco, in the Cottolengo compound. In December
1857 Ortalda launched L’Esposizione a favore delle Missioni Cattoliche affi-
date ai seicento Missionari Sardi, a weekly propaganda and information sheet
to serve a grand exhibition of fine objects collected from various mission
lands. The exhibition was to climax in a lottery in support of the 600 mission-
aries who had sailed from the Sardinian State’s shores to serve in missions
around the globe. On January 1st, 1860 the Esposizione became the Museo
delle Missioni Cattoliche. Don Bosco reportedly loved to read the magazine.
He advertised it in 1866 in the Letture Cattoliche and quoted it as the source
in the chapter on missions in the 1870 edition of his Storia Ecclesiastica and
his Nove giorni, a booklet on devotion to Mary Help of Christians, also pub-
lished in 187052. But we can say with some degree of certainty that he was not
a regular reader, and understandably so: he did not have the time. Though
aware of the climate of missionary re-awakening in the Church, animated lo-
cally by Ortalda and friends, Don Bosco remained largely on the sideline and
chose to focus on his main task of setting up the Salesian Society53.
He would absorb, and to a certain degree “re-package”, what helped him
build or strengthen his mission among the young and his publishing aposto-
late. An example of how missionary events would be re-packaged to fit his
priorities in animating the young is the celebration of the beatification and
canonization of the Japanese martyrs. On June 29, 1867 pope Pius IX beati-
fied a significant group of Japanese martyrs, victims of the persecution of
1617-1632. The solemn celebrations held in Rome had great resonance in
Valdocco because they coincided with the Centenary of St. Peter54. Five years
earlier, on June 8, 1862, the 26 Martyrs of Nagasaki of 1597 were canonized
in Rome in a particularly solemn celebration, in the presence of 43 cardinals,
5 Patriarchs and Primates, 52 Archbishops and 168 Bishops. The fact that no
Italian bishop could take part, due to the interference of the Italian govern-
ment at loggerheads with the Pontiff over the unity of Italy, could only serve
to further arouse Don Bosco’s attention. He gave the event considerable space
in the third (1869-1870) edition of his Storia Ecclesiastica: he published the
52 Giovanni BOSCO, Nove giorni consacrati all’augusta Madre del Salvatore sotto il
titolo di Maria Ausiliatrice. Torino, Tipografia dell’Oratorio di S. Francesco di Sales 1870,
in OE XXII, p. [333].
53 In November 1859 Mgr. Luigi Celestino Spelta OFM (+1862), Vicar Apostolic of
Hupei, and visitor apostolic in China, was in Turin under the auspices of the local Association
for the Propagation of the Faith and visited the apostolic school in the Cottolengo compound.
His visit did not extend to Don Bosco’s Hospice next door. “Museo” 47 (1859) 737-739.
54 MB VIII 862-864.

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234 Carlo Socol
full list of the Martyrs and underlined the sufferings and witness of Anthony,
a 13 year old immigrant from China55.
After he began travelling to Rome – in 1867, the year of the centenary of
the martyrdom of Peter and Paul, he sojourned for two months and visited
again in 1869 and 1870 – Don Bosco had become aware of other initiatives,
such as that of Mgr. Pietro Avanzini (1832-1874), of the diocese of Rome,
founder of the Acta Sanctae Sedis (1867), founder and promoter of the Pontif-
ical Seminary of the Holy Apostles Peter and Paul for the Foreign Missions,
an idea which had come to him in 1867, the year of the Centenary. When
Mgr. Avanzini proposed a “pia societas apostolorum”, i.e. an association of
friends willing to support the seminary by contributing funds and vocations,
Don Bosco, Comboni and Ortalda were among its adherents. We do not know
whether Don Bosco offered anything in concrete or whether he continued to
subscribe to the association. Ortalda’s adherence was tangible and surely
went further than Don Bosco’s: when the Roman seminary opened in De-
cember 1871 he contributed the first four seminarians, whom he chose from
among the students of his own apostolic schools56.
In the 1860’s and early ‘70’s Don Bosco could not afford to be swept
away by the missionary fervour and the initiatives others were launching, also
because he lacked the manpower. He lived those years liking what he saw
taking shape in the Church, “in a climate of enquiry, biding his time, drawing
up plans and weighing his chances and hopes”57. He started testing the waters
at around the time of the Vatican Council, as he began receiving offers to ex-
pand abroad. A number of other projects were coming on stream to consoli-
date his work: the Institute of the Daughters of Mary Help of Christians and
the Association of Salesian Co-operators. Piedmont was becoming too
narrow. He had one unfinished job: the approval of his Constitutions. Once
this was secured, in April 1874, he moved with surprising swiftness and, as
the saying goes, from then on he never looked back.
55 MB VII 180. Storia Ecclesiastica, (1871), OE XXIV, pp. 358-360.
56 AG-PIME XVI, p. 134: Societas Principum Apostolorum, appendix II, Primis gradus
rei propositae. Romae, Typis S. Congregationis de Propag[anda] Fide 1869, gives a catalogue
of all promoters. Among the promoters from abroad (extra urbem), on p. 4 of the pamphlet,
one finds Ioannes Bosco, Director celebris Oratorii Taurinensis S. Francisci Salesii. Avanzini
got the idea of a seminary for foreign missions in 1867, on the occasion of the centenary of St.
Peter and Paul. Having secured the support of Pius IX, the seminary opened on 23 December
1871. It was officially approved on 21 June 1874 and entrusted to Propaganda Fide. Avanzini
had since died. In 1926 the Roman Seminary was merged with the Milan Seminary to form the
Pontifical Institute of Foreign Missions of Milan, or PIME. Piero GHEDDO, Pime. 1850-2000:
150 anni di missione. Bologna, EMI 2000, pp. 93-97.
57 P. STELLA, Don Bosco nella storia…, p. 169.

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Don Bosco’s missionary call and China 235
1.4. Calling at Valdocco
It is somewhat comforting for us today to know that in the 25 years be-
tween 1845 and 1870 Don Bosco’s perception of the missionary phenomenon
grew and opened up substantially: this conclusion, though modest, tallies
with the law of gradual growth and with the fact that the missionary move-
ment in Italy began to acquire momentum in the 1850’s and 1860’s. In fact,
while France took a leading role in the first half of the century, the Italian ele-
ment grew stronger particularly in the second half. By 1864 there were 1500
Italian missionaries and 39 bishops serving in the missions58. The Turin Dio-
cese gradually opened up to the initiatives of the Association for the Propaga-
tion of the Faith when this was reinstated by royal decree in 1837, and per-
ceptibly more in the late 1850’s.
In 1859, when Piedmont had reached a certain collective missionary ma-
turity with 600 missionaries engaged in the field – close to 50% of the Italian
sum total – and Ortalda’s initiatives were receiving an encouraging response,
in an article carried in the Museo Don Bosco’s work was seen as no more
than a timely, but local service to young people in need and a seedbed of ec-
clesiastical vocations59. That same year Don Bosco established the Salesian
Society with the first band of disciples. The Society won the Holy See’s ap-
proval ten years later, in 1869. It was at this time that it began to be seen as a
possible source of services for the young outside of Italy60. In 1869, in a situ-
ation of emergency caused by natural calamity, Archbishop Charles Martial
Lavigerie (1825-1892) of Algiers turned to Don Bosco to obtain some Sale-
sians to look after Algerian orphans. It was the first invitation Don Bosco re-
ceived to help in a mission land. At that time he had not yet expanded outside
58 Roger AUBERT - Johannes BECKMANN - Patrick J. CORISH, Rudolf LILL, Liberalismo e
integralismo tra stati nazionali e diffusione missionaria 1830-1870. (= Hubert JEDIN [ed.],
Storia della Chiesa VIII/2). Milano, Jaca Book 1972, pp. 312-313. Pietro CHIOCCHETTA, San
Giovanni Bosco, Mons. Daniele Comboni e le iniziative missionarie per l’Africa Centrale,
“Salesianum” 50 (1988) 177.
59 Giovanni A. RAYNERI, Lettera al teologo ed avvocato Angelo Aymeri, missionario a
Nin-po in Cina, in “Museo” 28 (1858) 445. Father G. A. Rayneri (1809-1867), a pedagogist,
head of the Faculty of Literature and Philosophy of the University of Turin, was a friend and
admirer of Don Bosco. MB II 212; III 27; IV 318, 384, 438; VII 463.
60 MB XI 408. The information reported in a letter of Daniele Comboni to Bishop Luigi
di Canossa of Verona in 1865, that Don Bosco contributed “several missionaries” to the mis-
sions and “over 60 priests to the Church” every year, cannot be verified. P. CHIOCCHETTA, San
Giovanni Bosco, Mons. Daniele Comboni…, p. 180. Don Bosco mentions having contributed
missionaries to the missions before he thought of organizing his own in a report to the Holy
Father dated 13.04.1880, but the phenomenon is practically impossible to quantify: some may
have been genuine vocations, others – documents reveal – were drifters. E III 2033.

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236 Carlo Socol
Piedmont: he would the following year. Aware that he was not ready for such
a move, he offered to accept eight Algerian orphans whom Lavigerie en-
trusted to his care. Some of these French speaking youngsters had difficulty
in adapting to life at Valdocco and when the house in Nizza (France) opened
in November 1875 they moved there61.
The following year (1870) an invitation by another great missionary to
Africa, Daniele Comboni, was also allowed to fall. Comboni had previously
been in Valdocco, in early December 1864, on his way back from France. He
had travelled there to drum up consensus for his Plan for the regeneration of
Africa, which he had just hatched. In Turin, through the assistance of Canon
Ortalda, he had it printed by Falletti, the same firm that printed the Museo.
Comboni shared his ideas with Don Bosco and it seems it was in Valdocco
that he retouched the Plan, presenting it as the fruit of a sudden, unexpected
inspiration from above. On that occasion he spoke to the young about the
challenges of the emancipation of the black continent and his zeal and enthu-
siasm created quite a stir among them62. Comboni had made a fundamental
option for the redemption of Africa and was totally dedicated to his mission.
It was a huge task that required the participation and cooperation of all forces
in the Church. And so he tried to get also the “Saint of Turin”, as he called
Don Bosco, on board. In September 1869 and again on July 3, 1870 Comboni
wrote inviting him to send two or three priests and four or five brothers to run
an institute in Cairo to work alongside his missionaries. Comboni had just
presented a new document, his Postulatum pro Nigris Africae Centralis (or
Petition for the evangelization of Central Africa), to the Council Fathers in
Rome and had sent Don Bosco a copy. His invitation came with an offer to
entrust – in due time – a Vicariate Apostolic to the Salesians and allow them
to “be gradually grafted into Central Africa”. Don Bosco instructed his
deputy, Don Michele Rua (1837-1910), to reply and discuss the matter with
Comboni. Don Rua answered that for the time being they were unable to pro-
vide personnel but that they would willingly cooperate by accepting at Val-
61 MB IX 472; P. BRAIDO, Don Bosco prete dei giovani…, vol. II, p. 133; E(m) III, 1448;
IV, 2204, 2207.
62 MB VII 825-826. P. CHIOCCHETTA, San Giovanni Bosco, Mons. Daniele Comboni…,
p. 178.
Michele Rua (1837-1910) met Don Bosco as a young boy. He was among the small
group of youngsters who met in 1854 to start the Salesian Society. He professed privately the
following year and grew to become Don Bosco’s most faithful helper, working at his side from
1865 onwards. In 1884 pope Leo XIII made him vicar of Don Bosco, whom he succeeded as
Rector Major in 1888. During his rectorship the Salesians went to China (1906) and Salesian
houses in the world grew from 64 to 341. He was beatified in 1972.

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Don Bosco’s missionary call and China 237
docco any young people whom Comboni might wish to introduce, a type of
solution – incidentally – which Comboni himself had already given up as in-
adequate63.
The Ortaldas, the Combonis, the Lavigeries came and went, but Don
Bosco persisted in going his way. That may well have to do with his search
for an independent path to development, as well as with his peculiar experi-
ence of work among the young, which would result in a unique path to mis-
sion, one somewhat dependent on his youth and his work among them. As he
was busy at work in developing his Society and the various initiatives inextri-
cably linked with it, he began to “dream” of the possibility of expanding to
mission lands. He did not have the personnel yet, nor did he have a strategy,
but Comboni’s plan had given him some ideas to work on…
1.5. The turning point: the Vatican climate
After the Comboni visit in December 1864 other visitors called in at Val-
docco. On September 1, 1867 “a Reformed Franciscan bishop from Central
China, born in Bologna, visited the Oratory. He was given a cordial reception
by the boys and the brass band, and showed he was quite pleased with the
new church [of Mary Help of Christians] and the Oratory”. Don Bosco, who
had gone out for the day, probably did not get to meet him. It was Don Rua
who entered the event in the chronicle he had just inaugurated, but forgot or
did not record the name of the bishop: he was Mgr. Eustachio Vito Modesto
Zanoli OFMRef (1831-1883), Vicar Apostolic of Hupei. From what we know
his was no more than a courtesy call64.
In 1870 Mgr. Domenico Barbero (1820-1881), Vicar Apostolic of Hy-
derabad (India), who hailed from Foglizzo and was a good friend of Don
Bosco, asked Don Bosco if he had any sisters to send to his Vicariate and was
introduced to the Institute of the Sisters of St. Anne and of Divine Provi-
dence65. By the very presence of 180 bishops from mission lands, the Vatican
63 MB VIII 187-189 and MB IX 711, 888-889.
64 MB VIII 922. Bishop Eustachio Vito Modesto Zanoli OFMRef was born in the dio-
cese of Modena (no Reformed Franciscan bishop born in Bologna served in China during these
years) in 1831, joined the China mission in 1856, succeeded Mgr. Luigi Celestino Spelta OFM
as Vicar Apostolic of Hupei in 1862 and was assigned to the Eastern portion upon its division
in 1871. He died in 1883. Hierarchia Catholica VIII, p. 257.
65 MB X 626, 658. Mgr. Barbero was consecrated in Rome first bishop of the Seminary
of Foreign Missions of Milan in April 1870 while attending the Council. He returned to Hyder-
abad with six sisters of St. Anne, all of them diploma holders, on 3 March 1871. P. GHEDDO,
Pime…, pp. 319-320.

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238 Carlo Socol
Council had considerably boosted the visibility of foreign missions in Italy.
Bishops from North America, Africa and Asia had taken advantage to re-
cruit clergy and sisters. Some of them travelled all the way to Turin. Mgr.
Giuseppe Sadoc Alemany OP (1814-1888), archbishop of San Francisco,
began negotiating with Don Bosco in July 1870 to open a trade school and
hospice. The negotiations were interrupted for unknown reasons66. Unnamed
bishops approached Don Bosco during his stay in Rome67. The Biographical
Memoirs record that “on the occasion of the Vatican Council” two bishops
from China visited Valdocco: Mgr. Luigi Moccagatta OFMObs (1809-1891),
Vicar Apostolic of Shantung, and from 27 September 1870 of Shansi, a native
of Castellazzo di Alessandria. With him was Mgr. Eligio Cosi OFMObs
(1819-1885), from 1865 his coadjutor, and from 29 September 1870 ap-
pointed his successor as Vicar Apostolic of Shantung. According to Don
Francesco Dalmazzo, who recalled the visit years later without recording the
date, the two had specifically come from Rome to explain the great need of
missionaries suffered in those lands68. From Rome Comboni had sent Don
Bosco a copy of his Postulatum, followed shortly thereafter by the proposal
we already know about.
The missions were being debated at the Council by an ad hoc commis-
sion, but the draft document Super Missionibus Catholicis was not brought
before the assembly and so nothing came out of it. Unanswered remained
such important issues as the formation and promotion of indigenous clergy
and the setting up of local churches, which the Holy See encouraged69. Don
Bosco had been in Rome while the Council was in progress. During the papal
audience he was granted on 8 February 1870 Pius IX disclosed that the
bishops of Parma and Mondovì had reported on the Salesian Society to the
Council Fathers, who were interested in models of religious life adapted to an
66 Michael RIBOTTA, The road not taken, in “Journal of Salesian Studies” 2 (1990) pp.
54-55. E(m) III, 1448, 1452. Episodic evidence shows that lack of personnel may have played
its part in aborting the plan, due to start either in spring or fall of 1871. AME 20, 807.
67 MB IX 834.
68 Luigi Moccagatta OFMObs (1809-1891) arrived in China in 1840, was consecrated
bishop in 1844 as episcopal pro-vicar of Shantung and Vicar Apostolic in 1848. Hierarchia
Catholica VII, 402; Eligio Cosi OFMObs (1819-1885), from Pontassieve in Tuscany, had been
a missionary in China since 1845. Hierarchia Catholica VIII, 470; MB IX 891.
Francesco Dalmazzo (1845-1895) was ordained in 1868 and professed in 1869. He was
rector of Valsalice (1872-1880), rector of S. Cuore in Rome and Procurator General (1880-
1887), founder of the Salesian House in London (1887) and rector of St. John Ev. In Turin
(1888-1894). He died in tragic circumstances while helping the bishop of Catanzaro.
69 A. FAVALE, Le missioni nei primordi della Congregazione Salesiana…, p. 29-44; A.
LENTI, I sogni di Don Bosco…, p. 95. Jean COMBY, How to understand the history of Cristian
Mission. London, SCM Press 1996, p. 212.

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Don Bosco’s missionary call and China 239
increasingly secularized world70. Invitations, visits and requests increased
perhaps as a result of this unexpected propaganda, since many of the bishops
from mission lands approached him. The following year – as we know – Don
Bosco sought the advice of Pius IX on whether he should consider these invi-
tations. The Society, approved in 1869, had yet to secure the approval of its
Constitutions. Besides, with a mere 26 perpetually professed priests, Don
Bosco included, 8 in temporary vows and 6 houses to run in 1872, he could
hardly afford to send 6-8 Salesians to the missions as, for instance, Comboni
had asked71.
In September 1873, while Don Bosco was working on the text of the
Constitutions to win Rome’s approval, Father Timoleone Raimondi (+1894),
of the Milan Seminary, Prefect Apostolic of Hong Kong, on his way to Paris
and London in search of an Institute willing to help him run the Catholic
schools in his Prefecture, passed through Turin and took up lodging at Val-
docco. He had not meant to, but soon he started discussing and negotiating a
deal under which Don Bosco would send his Salesians to take over the Hong
Kong schools. The persistence with which Don Bosco pursued the deal and
the swiftness with which soon thereafter, when the plan failed to materialize,
he decided to go to Argentina, suggest he felt he was finally ready for an
overseas move.
2. Negotiations with Timoleone Raimondi for a house in Hong Kong
(1873-1874)
Raimondi needed to quickly find a community of Religious Brothers to
run the Mission’s male schools: the two Benedictine priests who in January
1873 had taken charge of Catholic education wanted to leave because of his
refusal to entertain their request that, besides taking care of education, they be
assigned a public church where they could exercise the sacred ministry. The
two monks, the Rev. Swithbert Palmer OSB and the Rev. Aidan Macdonald
OSB, had left the care of a parish in Belgium to help the Hong Kong Prefec-
70 MB IX 810-811.
71 Società di S. Francesco di Sales anno 1872, in OE XXIV, pp. 489-498. Altogether
there were 103 professed Salesians and 86 novices. Also MB IX 888-889. According to an
1880 report, in 1872 Don Bosco for the first time discussed with Card. Barnabò the possibility
of sending missionaries abroad. There is no documentary trace of this; besides, that year Don
Bosco did not enjoy good health and did not travel to Rome. The 1880 report was written in
Rome, possibly without archival support. E III, 2033.

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240 Carlo Socol
ture Apostolic education programme on an experimental basis, but Raimondi
– not known for easily giving up his ideas – argued that they had been called
specifically to run schools and hence he would not budge, fearing that the
hard-won “unity and harmony” in the Prefecture might be jeopardized. In this
he had the support of Propaganda, in keeping with the then prevailing prin-
ciple of jus commissionis, which granted exclusive rights in evangelization to
the Religious Order to which a territory had been assigned. Raimondi had
taken the government ‘secularized’ school system head-on and had won the
right to provide Catholic education to Catholic expatriate and Chinese chil-
dren, on condition he employed at least two English native teachers. Teaching
Brothers were the preferred solution, because they could not, and hence
would not ask to, exercise the sacred ministry. Finding Brothers to come to
Hong Kong, however, was easier said than done: education was very much in
demand and, unless the Holy See stepped in with a word of recommendation,
it was nearly impossible to obtain anyone. Raimondi fancied the Christian
Brothers, “Brothers of Christian Doctrine” as they were called then: he had
been informed that they had opened a noviciate in England and so he was
confident that they would be able to provide the two English brothers he
needed. Besides they were already present in Indochina. Contacts had been
made early on, in April 1872. To obtain their services, he had enlisted the
help of Propaganda, of the Nuncio in Paris and, of course, of his own Supe-
rior in Milan. But since the Christian Brothers’ reply had been consistently
negative, he was ready to settle for the Marist Brothers, or the Xaverian
Brothers of Ghent, Belgium: the Xaverian Brothers, he noted, “have good
teachers and are to a greater extent subject to the Ordinary than the Brothers
of Christian Doctrine”72.
72 Giovanni Timoleone Raimondi (1827-1894) joined the Milan Seminary and was or-
dained a priest in 1850. From 1852 he worked in Melanesia and Labuan. In 1858 he was trans-
ferred to Hong Kong and in 1868 was elected pro-Prefect Apostolic and Procurator of Propa-
ganda. When the Prefecture was elevated to Vicariate Apostolic in 1874, Raimondi became its
first Vicar Apostolic. Strong in character but extremely capable and energetic, he is considered
the founder of the Hong Kong mission. He fought for the right to establish Catholic schools
and inspired the formation of an indigenous association of “virgins”, which would became
an autonomous congregation in 1922: the Sisters of the Precious Blood. P. GHEDDO, Pime…,
pp. 463-480.
Unless specifically indicated otherwise, the details of this Part 2 on Raimondi’s negotia-
tions with Don Bosco have been gleaned from the following, extensive sources: APF, Cina e
Regni Adiacenti (1873-74) Vol. 25 and AG-PIME, AME 16. On this topic see also HA SEONG
KWONG - L. E. KEELON, The Foundation of the Catholic Mission in Hong Kong, 1841-1894.
Doctoral Thesis, University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong 1998, pp. 147-148; Sergio TICOZZI, Il
Pime e la perla dell’oriente (Hong Kong). Unpublished work. Archivio Generale Pime, Roma
1999, p. 52.

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Don Bosco’s missionary call and China 241
2.1. Raimondi at Valdocco
En route to France he made a stopover in Turin and was lodged at the
Oratory. Here he saw what Don Bosco was doing, liked what he saw, and got
an offer from him to send his Salesians to Hong Kong. They talked it over
and Raimondi, there and then, prepared a draft agreement on paper with the
letterhead of the Oratory of St. Francis de Sales73:
“Oratorio di S. Francesco di Sales
Torino
1. L’ educazione della gioventù maschile cattolica di Hong Kong si affida alla
Congregazione del Sac. D. Giovanni Bosco.
2. Avranno l’ intera amministrazione degli stabilimenti maschili colle facoltà
necessarie per la direzione spirituale dei giovani. In quanto alle altre opere
del ministero si presteranno qualora il Prefetto Apostolico o chi ne fa le
veci lo richiegga.
3. Avranno cappelle private nei loro stabilimenti. Confesseranno e predicher-
anno nelle chiese pubbliche qualora fossero richiesti dal Prefetto.
4. Potranno formare nuovi stabilimenti d’accordo col Prefetto Apostolico. In
quanto a sottoscrizioni o collette per gli stabilimenti si metteranno pure
d’accordo col Prefetto Apostolico o chi ne fa le veci.
5. Il profitto e perdita che ne venisse dagli stabilimenti sarà interamente a
carico loro.
6. L’ educazione avrà di mira di formare buoni secolari.
7. Avranno di mira di avere sempre due o tre maestri inglesi.
8. Nel collegio e scuole per gli Europei si insegnerà Inglese, Portoghese,
Francese e Chinese, la matematica, geografia, storia, fisica. Nell’orfan-
otrofio o riformatorio per Chinesi avranno arti e mestieri.
9. Il Collegio sarà tenuto nobilmente. Per la classe povera europea potranno
formare un orfanato.
[Pref. Apost.
Raimondi]”
Both seemed keen to strike a deal, but at this stage the discussions could
only have been exploratory in nature. Raimondi went on to Paris and on Sep-
tember 30 informed his Superior in Milan, in admiring words, that he had met
Don Bosco in Turin and had held talks with him:
“Viddi a Torino Don Bosco. Che uomo! direi che Santo! il fine dei suoi Sac-
erdoti è l'educazione della gioventù proprio quello che sarebbe necessario a
Hong Kong. Concordiamo nelle idee e se non riesco coi fratelli sarei inclinato
a prendere i discepoli di Don Bosco con qualche giovane Inglese. Che ne dice
Lei di Don Bosco e dei suoi? Per ora basta, non vi è più carta”74.
73 Original in HKDHA V-23-02.
74 Raimondi to Marinoni 30.09.1873, in AG-PIME, AME 16, 1403.

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242 Carlo Socol
On October 6 he also wrote to the Prefect of Propaganda Fide to inform
him that the Superior of the Cristian Brothers was absent and that after 15
days in Paris he had received no clear and conclusive answer. The Brothers
would love to work in Hong Kong but had no personnel available. Raimondi
hence announced he would go to Bruges, to see what could be obtained from
the Marist Brothers, and from there to England, to try to convince Abbot Wil-
fred Alcock OSB to keep the Benedictines in Hong Kong at least until he had
found a replacement75. At this point he introduced his dealings with Don
Bosco, specifically requesting the opinion of the Roman Congregation:
“A Torino ho conosciuto il Rev. D. Bosco, uomo straordinario, il quale
udendo che V.E. desiderava che io trovassi qualcheduno per le scuole e orfan-
otrofio, mi offrì subito i suoi: mi aiuterebbe anche nelle spese, e la sua Con-
gregazione ha per fine propriam[ente] quello che io avrei bisogno si facesse a
Hong Kong. Ha dei fratelli artisti bravissimi; mancherebbero però d’Inglese;
a questo si potrebbe supplire col trovare qualche giovane Inglese, che volesse
unirsi a loro e venire a Hong Kong. Coi fratelli verrebbe qualche sacerdote,
ma per quello che intesi da Don Bosco non domanderebbe Chiesa a sé, come
i Benedettini.
Desidererei sapere sopra ciò l’opinione di V. E. Nulla fu concluso finora,
ma non sarebbe difficile venire ad una conclusione. Abbia V. E. la bontà
di scrivermi sopra ciò, e diriga la lettera al Seminario des Miss[ions]
Etrang[eres] [de] Paris”76.
Card. Alessandro Barnabò, head of Propaganda, promptly replied on 14
October, authorizing Raimondi to deal with Don Bosco:
“In pronto riscontro della lettera direttami da V.S. in data del 6 corrente debbo
significarle che da parte di questa S. Congregazione non esiste nessuna diffi-
coltà a che Ella accetti per la Missione di Hong Kong i soggetti che Le sono
stati offerti dal Rev. Sacerdote D. Bosco. Si apparterrà poi a Lei di giudicare se
abbiano questi tutte le qualità necessarie per disimpegnare con frutto quegli uf-
fici, che Ella intende loro affidare, ed in questo caso di prendere col detto sac-
erdote tutti gli opportuni concerti, sia riguardo alle spese di viaggio, sia su tutte
quelle che concerne la loro destinazione nella Missione di Hong Kong”77.
Barnabò’s letter reached Raimondi in London. There he also received a
communication, from his Institute’s headquarters in Milan, the contents of
which he referred to the Cardinal in a letter dated November 13:
75 The Rev. Wilfred Alcock OSB, Abbot of St. Augustine’s, Ramsgate (England), was
“Visitor” of the Anglo-Belgian Province of the reformed “Congregazione Cassinense”. APF,
Acta 1875, n. 243, f. 374; AG-PIME, AME 16, 345.
76 Original in APF, Cina e Regni Adiacenti (1873-1874), Vol. 25, p. 545r-v; draft in
HKDA II.5.06; copy in AIC, Hong Kong.
77 Original HKDA II.5.05; copy in AIC, Hong Kong.

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Don Bosco’s missionary call and China 243
“Ho l’onore di accusare ricevuta della lettera di V.E. che mi pervenne qui a
Londra. Nello stesso tempo ricevetti una lettera dal mio Seminario di Milano,
e da quella appare che il Superiore del Seminario [Mons. G. Marinoni] non
ami che io entri in trattative con quello del Rev. D. [Sig.?] Bosco. Non
amando di far cosa contraria ai desideri dei miei superiori, mi astengo. Ma chi
trovare?” 78.
The Superior of the Milan Lombard Seminary for Foreign Missions in
Via S. Calogero, hence the name ‘Fathers of S. Calocero’, was Mgr. Giuseppe
Marinoni. The letter to which Raimondi refers, and which presumably was a
reply to Raimondi’s letter of September 30, could have been written by Fr.
Giacomo Scurati on behalf of his Superior79. Scurati handled Marinoni’s cor-
respondence especially in the final months of 1873 and the early months of
1874, when the Superior was plagued by severe eye problems. The letter
should have been in Hong Kong together with other papers of Raimondi, but
it has been found neither in Hong Kong nor elsewhere, leaving us in the dark
as to why Marinoni objected to the negotiations. Personal antagonism or lack
of trust should be excluded. In April 1882 Marinoni visited Don Bosco in
Turin in an attempt to secure personnel for Mgr. Eugenio Biffi (+1896), who
was being transferred to Cartagena in Colombia and who badly wanted the
cooperation of Salesian priests, only to find him absent from home80. He held
Don Bosco in high esteem, at least in so far as we can gather from the letter
of condolences he wrote to Don Rua on the occasion of Don Bosco’s death
and from other correspondence81. Marinoni’s letters offer some clues as to
plausible reasons, but the real motive was, in part at least, a general policy the
Institute applied in Hong Kong of denying other religious Orders the possi-
bility of engaging in pastoral work in order to ensure unity and harmony.
Some years later Raimondi, who in obedience to such dispositions had re-
fused the services offered by the Jesuits and the Dominicans, would complain
78 Raimondi to Propaganda from London 13.11.1873. Original in APF, Cina e Regni
Adiacenti (1873-74), Vol. 25, p. 598r-v; minute in HKDA II.5.06: the letter is not among the
Raimondi papers. Marinoni and Scurati left minutes only of official letters.
79 Mgr. Giuseppe Marinoni (1810-1891) is co-founder of the Lombard Seminary, later
PIME, with Mgr. Angelo Ramazzotti, and its first Superior, a position he held for 41 years
(1850-1891) steering the Institute through its first, critical period. Giacomo Scurati (1831-
1901), a former missionary to Hong Kong and secretary of Mgr. Luigi Celestino Spelta OFM,
apostolic visitor of the China Missions (June 1860 – September 1862) succeeded Marinoni at
the helm of the Institute (1891-1901). P.GHEDDO, Pime…, pp. 77-114.
80 AG-PIME, AME 07, 343, 345, 433 and AG-PIME 21, 993. On Biffi, P. GHEDDO,
Pime…, pp. 669-673.
81 Marinoni to Rua 4.2.1888 in ASC A0410440. Also Marinoni to Cagliero 28.7.1881 in
ASC A0200139.

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244 Carlo Socol
to his Superior about the negative effect, i.e. the much good that could have
been done had they agreed to the request82. A second reason may well have
been the fact that the position of the Milan Fathers in Hong Kong was far
from secure: they had assigned only five missionaries to work in the Prefec-
ture and could easily feel at a disadvantage next to a fast growing religious
Congregation like the Salesians. Had Don Bosco sent a community of 6-8
Salesians, what comparisons would be drawn? They were not unreasonable
fears: when news broke that a Vicariate Apostolic would be erected in Hong
Kong, bishop Patrick Moran of Ossory (Ireland), wrote to Rome suggesting
that an English speaking Vicar Apostolic would be preferable in such a
strategic place, right at China’s door83. And so, when Raimondi managed to
get six Christian Brothers for Hong Kong, he made sure the number of his
missionaries increased to nine. Whatever the actual reason, we know for sure
that the Superior’s veto became, as we shall see, a source of embarrassment
to Raimondi, who had to disengage Don Bosco as diplomatically as possible.
And not to him alone, but later also to the Milan Fathers when in 1927 they
welcomed the Salesians in Hong Kong: in 1929 they kindly provided authen-
ticated copies of the Raimondi papers regarding his negotiations with Don
Bosco, minus two: the letters that contained references to the Superior’s veto.
On November 25 the Secretary of Propaganda replied to Raimondi in
the following terms:
“Ebbi la Sua del 13 Novembre scrittami da Londra. Si è ben governata nell’
interrompere la corrispondenza con D. Bosco di Torino, per avere i Maestri,
giacchè ciò sembra non piacere al R. D. Giuseppe Marinoni”84.
The Secretary could afford the advice. In fact he had a piece of good
news for Raimondi: he had spoken with the Superior General of the Brothers
of the Christian Schools, Brother Philippe Bransiet, and had found him ready
to discuss the possibility of sending English Brothers to Hong Kong85. He
could then discontinue his negotiations with the Marists and take advantage,
while in France and before returning to Rome, to discuss pertinent matters
with the Christian Brothers. Meanwhile Raimondi, before he could receive
82 Raimondi to Marinoni 13.06.1878 AG-PIME, AME 17, 235-238 quoted in S. TICOZZI,
Il Pime…, p. 112.
83 Marinoni to Propaganda 12.05.1874 in APF, Cina e Regni Adiacenti (1873-74). Vol.
25, f. 1000.
84 APF Lettere e decreti della SC, Biglietti Mons. Segretario (1873), vol. 369, p. 567v.
85 During the long generalate of Bro. Philippe Bransiet (1838-1874) the Brothers experi-
enced rapid growth and expansion, especially in the years up to 1850. J. R. LANE, Christian
Brothers, in New Catholic Encyclopedia, III. New York, McGraw-Hill 1967, p. 631.

4 Pages 31-40

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Don Bosco’s missionary call and China 245
the good news, fretted because of his inability to find a Congregation ready to
commit itself without delay. His November 26 report to his Superior con-
tained a respectful, but clear word of complaint. He wrote:
“Vi sono tre Congregazioni che dicono che facilmente potranno venire dopo
due anni. Ma finché io non ho qualche cosa di sicuro io non posso partire. La
unica pronta è quella del Rev. Bosco e mi rincresce di vedere difficoltà anche
per questo” 86.
Between the end of November and the beginning of December Rai-
mondi again vented his frustration, as he wrote to his Superior in a somewhat
polemical tone on an undated half sheet of paper:
“[…] intanto andremo a Lione a trattare colla Propagazione e coi Fratelli
Maristi. Batti di qua, batti di là qualcosa verrà fuori. Ma finora, buon Supe-
riore, io debbo dire che se non vi è che una Congregazione che sia pronta
questa è quella del Sac. Bosco. Non sarebbe questo un segno che è chiamata
per l’ opera nostra? Il Sac. Bosco è un santo, e si guadagna sempre ad attac-
carsi ai Santi. La lingua (e la penna) battono dove il dente duole, non è
vero?” 87.
If Raimondi’s comments were intended to remove the objections of the
Superior, the letter did not achieve its goal. But when he received the good
news from Propaganda and felt he was finally out of the woods, he no longer
insisted. All he needed now was to find a way to tell Don Bosco that his offer
was no longer needed, without letting him know that the negotiations had
been interrupted at his Superior’s prompting.
2.2. Don Bosco in Rome for the approval of the Constitutions
Meanwhile, at the end of December, Don Bosco had arrived in Rome
seeking the approval of the Constitutions of the Salesian Society and stayed
at Via Sistina 104, in lodgings provided for him and his secretary by co-oper-
ators Alessandro and Matilde Sigismondi. At 11am on January 5th he was re-
ceived in private audience by pope Pius IX. On a little scrap of paper he had
annotated the various things, 24 items in all, that he wanted to ask about or
discuss with the Holy Father, mainly favours for his benefactors. The number
14 item regarded “The house of Hong Kong” and number 15 the “Affairs of
the Society”. This scrap of paper contains the first Salesian reference to the
negotiations: so far, in fact, our source has been Raimondi’s correspondence
86 Raimondi to Marinoni 26.11.1873 in AG-PIME, AME 16,1412-3.
87 Raimondi to Marinoni, undated, ibid. 1416.

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246 Carlo Socol
with either Propaganda or his Institute. That same day, January 5th, Don
Bosco wrote to Don Rua and all the residents of Valdocco describing the au-
dience and confirming having spoken “about Hong Kong” 88. The topic of
Hong Kong would come up again in the correspondence of the following
days and weeks.
Don Gioachino Berto’s diary informs us that on January 6th and again on
January 9th Don Bosco was received by Monsignor Giovanni Simeoni (1816-
1892), Secretary of Propaganda Fide. On the latter date Berto penned the fol-
lowing entry: “Card. Barnabò, Prefect of the Missions, expressed the desire to
see Don Bosco; however he said he would go [to see the cardinal] after
having spoken with Mgr. Raimondi”89. From this we reasonably infer that the
two had arranged to see each other and that Don Bosco wanted to get the
latest information on the Hong Kong negotiations to share with the head of
Propaganda. On January 11th Don Bosco wrote again to Don Rua with a
string of tasks to entrust to him and there, in no particular order, he asked Don
Rua to “tell Don Savio to prepare to sanctify himself in order to go and sanc-
tify those of Hong Kong”. Had he thought of sending Don Angelo Savio
(1835-1893), the Economer General, as leader of the first overseas expedi-
tion, or was he merely trying to keep interest in the planned venture alive90?
On January 15th after lunch – Berto wrote – “a number of persons went in to
speak to Don Bosco. Thereafter we went out and headed for the Ministry of
Justice. On the way we spoke about Hong Kong”. On January 19th evening,
as Don Bosco and his trusted secretary were walking towards the Vatican,
they came across Monsignor Simeoni, “who would like to give us a mission
all by ourselves”. On January 23 they had lunch “at home”, meaning at Via
Sistina. “After lunch came Mgr. Raymondi [sic], Prefect Apostolic of the
Mission of Hong Kong”.
On January 18th Raimondi had accompanied a group of missionaries – a
priest, three sisters and two Irish students – to Marseille as they prepared to
88 ASC, A2210604; E(m) IV, 1883.
89 Gioacchino BERTO, Appunti del viaggio di D. Bosco a Roma nel 1873-74, p. 7, 12, 14
in ASC A0040403.
Gioacchino Berto (1847-1914) was for over two decades Don Bosco’s private secretary.
In such capacity he accompanied Don Bosco on his travels. He is also known for his numerous
ascetic writings. Eugenio VALENTINI – Angelo RODINÒ (edd.), Dizionario biografico dei Sale-
siani. Torino 1969, pp. 38-39.
90 E(m) IV, 1892.
Angelo Savio (1835-1893) was elected first Economer General in 1859 and again in
1869 and 1873. In 1875 he was assigned to supervise several construction works, including the
Basilica of S. Cuore in Rome. In 1885 he left for S. America: in one of his dreams in 1861 Don
Bosco had seen him working in very remote regions. E. VALENTINI – A. RODINÒ (edd.),
Dizionario biografico…, p. 255.

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Don Bosco’s missionary call and China 247
sail for Hong Kong. The following day he left for Rome. Whatever Raimondi
told Don Bosco on January 23 was not of a conclusive nature, such as for in-
stance that he had already found the personnel he was looking for and there-
fore no longer needed Don Bosco’s services: the two, in fact, agreed to meet
again a few days later. But what Raimondi wrote to his superior the following
day is quite revealing. He informed him that the Brothers of the Christian
Schools had promised Card. Barnabò that they would send teachers to Hong
Kong. Then he added:
“Don Bosco travaglia perché accettiamo i suoi. Credo che non convenga per
ora. Quindi se venisse a Milano non conchiudino niente con D. Bosco” 91.
Raimondi apparently did not know how to tell Don Bosco, who was
quite keen to send his Salesians to Hong Kong, that he could not take up his
offer. And so he thought it prudent to alert his Superiors in Milan in case Don
Bosco, who was having a hard time finding suitable personnel, approached
them. On January 26th evening – Berto again informs us – Raimondi visited
Don Bosco a second time. Again the contents of the conversation are not
known, but he very likely told Don Bosco that it was essential he provide
English speaking teachers; they also talked about possible ways to recruit
them, with Raimondi suggesting Don Bosco turn to either the English or the
Irish College, as he himself had done through Propaganda Fide years earlier92,
and in all likelihood agreed to postpone the signing of an agreement pending
the solution of the language problem. From what we know, the two never met
again. The question of the language was an objective one, but Don Bosco had
reasons to believe that they were genuinely seeking a solution and that conse-
quently his project to send the Salesians to Hong Kong was still on track. The
ensuing chain of events is enlightening.
2.3. Switching to plan B
The following day, January 27th, Don Bosco and his trusted secretary
visited Mgr. Tobias Kirby (1803-1895), Rector of the Irish College in Via
Magnanapoli93. Kirby extended a lunch invitation to the two for the following
91 Raimondi to Marinoni 24.01.1874 in AG-PIME, AME 16, 1446-7.
92 On 9 September 1873 Raimondi had sought the good offices of Propaganda Fide to
obtain two teachers for Hong Kong. APF, Cina e Regni Adiacenti (1873-74) Vol. 25, 457v.
93 Mgr. Tobias Kirby was one of Don Bosco’s great friends in Rome. Born in Ireland in
1803, he was rector of the Irish College in Rome for 50 years and eventually became an influen-
tial adviser to Propaganda Fide. In 1881 he was appointed titular bishop of Lete and in 1886 he
was promoted titular archbishop of Ephesus. He died in Rome in 1895. HC VIII, p. 260, 340.

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248 Carlo Socol
Sunday. On Sunday, February 1st, the two were guests at Kirby’s. The
problem of the English speaking staff was certainly broached. On Saturday,
February 14th, Don Bosco was again received by the Holy Father and the dif-
ficulty, together with a proposed solution, regarding English speaking instruc-
tors came up for discussion. The complications Don Bosco was facing are
echoed in an obscure remark contained in a letter to Don Rua dated 17th Feb-
ruary and containing the usual task list:
“Da pure il biglietto a [Giuseppe] Rossi, ma digli che io temo che colla ces-
sione del Gran Can comprometta la Missione di Hong Kongh [sic] che appar-
tiene al suo impero” 94.
On Sunday, February 22nd, Don Bosco and Don Berto were again at
Mgr. Kirby’s for lunch, after which “Don Bosco spoke to two young
Irishmen, a priest surnamed Liston and a deacon surnamed Hallinan, about
their coming to Turin to be formed for two or three years in order to educate
young Irishmen for the missions”. That was the plan, to have the two young
Irish clergymen stay with him in Valdocco and help form vocations from the
English speaking world, a need that became even more pressing and clear a
few days later when he met Fr. Giovanni Bertazzi, who worked in the United
States, with whom he would soon engage in talks to send Salesians to Sa-
vannah, and in summer yet another round of negotiations was started with
Bishop Matthew Quinn (+1885) of Bathurst to form missionaries to send to
Australia95. The idea had already been suggested by Raimondi during the
94 Don Bosco to Rua 17.02.1874 in MB X 773; E II, 1166; E(m) IV, 1914.
Giuseppe Rossi (1864-1908) was a well known lay brother in Valdocco, trusted by Don
Bosco and often mentioned in the Memorie Biografiche. What Don Bosco wrote about impe-
rial “cession” in China remains unclear: had he heard from Raimondi about the problem of
“succession” within the imperial dynasty and the repercussions this might have on Hong
Kong? Emperor Tung-chih acceded to the throne in 1861 at the age of five and took over
power in 1873 only to die suddenly in January 1875 at the age of eighteen leaving no heir.
Throughout his reign and the decades that followed effective control remained in the hands of
his mother, Empress Tsu-hsi. Meanwhile Hong Kong was locked in a protracted dispute with
the viceroy of Canton over the levying of taxes on opium smuggled into China by Chinese ves-
sels based in Hong Kong, which damaged the portion of trade controlled by local interests. See
Johnathan D. SPENCE, The search for modern China. New York, Norton 1991, pp. 194, 204,
216-217; G. B. ENDACOTT, A history of Hong Kong. Hong Kong, Oxford University Press
19732, pp. 187-194.
95 Giovanni Bertazzi, an Italian priest working in the United States, had asked Don
Bosco to help run a school in Savannah (USA). In April 1874 he wrote a proposal. The deal did
no go through. E(m) IV, 1936, 1956; MB X 1359-1371.
Matthew Quinn (1820-1885) studied at the College of Propaganda in Rome. He was first
Vicar General of the diocese of Hyderabad (India), vice-President and then President of the
Seminary of St. Lawrence in Dublin and from 1865 bishop of Bathurst in Australia. HC, VIII,
106. See also MB X 1269-1272.

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Don Bosco’s missionary call and China 249
Turin encounter and had won the support of Pius IX. Fathers Thomas Liston
and Denis Hallinan eventually went to Turin not long thereafter. In early June
they went back to Ireland on holiday with a letter written by Don Bosco in
Latin authorizing Hallinan to recruit young Irish vocations for Valdocco96.
The plan did not work out: the young men, some twenty in all whom Fr. Hal-
linan had recruited, expected to be housed and trained in comfortable lodg-
ings, like Valsalice for instance, and wanted to be free on completion of the
training course to opt for whatever mission they chose and not necessarily to
become Salesians, as Don Bosco wanted. Don Bosco, Bishop Quinn pointed
out, “was not in a position to give security of permanence for the projected
institution”, meaning a general missionary college that would attract young
men from Ireland to be trained for the missions97. The main reason could well
be another: Don Bosco had put the plan of preparing personnel for the Eng-
lish speaking missions on the back burner, since he was working on another
idea. In mid June, in fact, he had met Mr. Giovanni Battista Gazzolo, Argen-
tinean consul in Savona; at the end of August Gazzolo had sent letters to the
Archbishop of Buenos Aires suggesting he invite the Salesians to man the
Italian church of the Mother of Mercy.
Back in Rome, in February: Don Bosco was not having an easy task in
securing the approval of the Salesian Constitutions. The Hong Kong connec-
tion seemed like a godsend: since he was struggling to obtain the faculty of
issuing dimissorial letters, i.e. granting permission for clerics in his care to be
ordained to the priesthood, an essential condition to operate as a religious So-
ciety in different countries and dioceses, he “played up” the invitations he
was receiving from abroad. Believing that his negotiations with Raimondi
were still on track, in March Don Bosco drafted a letter to pope Pius IX
asking for the faculty to open some houses in Italy and overseas:
96 E(m) IV, 1965, 1974; MB X 1372. The Hallinan letter mentions the consent of Pius IX
for the plan. An incorrect interpretation of this letter induced the biographer to wrongly con-
clude that Don Bosco, at that stage, had received also the papal consent to open houses abroad.
See MB X 1272.
Dr. Denis Hallinan (+1923) returned to Ireland and engaged in parish work. He became
bishop of Limerick and in 1919 welcomed the Salesians in his diocese. Thomas Liston also re-
turned to Ireland to begin parish ministry in Ballingary, Co. Limerick, and thereafter disap-
peared from the story. William John DICKSON, The dynamics of growth. The foundation and de-
velopment of the Salesians in England. Roma, LAS 1991, p. 41.
97 E(m) IV, 2010; W. J. DICKSON, The dynamics of growth…, pp. 37-41. Regarding the
failure of the experiment Don Bosco lamented the unsuitability of the subjects – Cronichetta,
ASC A0000103, p. 67 – while to Kirby he also mentioned financial difficulties. W. J. DICKSON,
The dynamics of growth…, pp. 39-41. E(m) IV 2017, 2020, 2036.

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250 Carlo Socol
“Il Sac. Giovanni Bosco, Superiore della Congregazione di S. Francesco di
Sales, prostrato ai piedi di V.B. espone umilmente che avrebbe presso che
conchiuse le trattative per aprire:
1. Una casa pei poveri fanciulli cattolici dell’ isola di Hong Kong nella China;
2. Un Ospizio con scuole in Savannah nell’ America;
3. […] un istituto di carità nella città di Genova […];
4. Un collegio […] nel paese di Ceccano98.
Sebbene le intelligenze finora tenute abbiano avuto luogo direttamente coi
rispettivi Ordinari diocesani, tuttavia secondo le Costituzioni Salesiane non
potendosi nè aprire, nè assumere l’amministrazione di nuove case senza
il consenso della S. Sede, umilmente ricorre a V.B. implorando le opportune
facoltà” 99.
The letter is undated. All we have is the original unsigned draft kept in
the Salesian Archives: the original letter was not found in the Vatican
Archives, where it normally should be, had it been delivered. It is quoted in
the Biographical Memoirs and in Ceria’s Epistolario in relation with a papal
audience Don Bosco supposedly had in March, on the sole basis of a note, a
memorandum written in Don Bosco’s own hand on a scrap of paper entitled
Udienza Marzo 1874. It is the only piece of evidence we have regarding the
“audience”, which seemingly never took place. As we have seen Don Bosco
had already been granted two previous audiences, on January 5th and on Feb-
ruary 14th respectively. Don Berto’s diary does not mention the March audi-
ence. The note or memorandum does not give the date when the audience
occurred and its contents were largely repeated in the memorandum for the
audience of March 12th the following year100. The pope granted Don Bosco
another audience on April 8th, soon after the approval of the Constitutions.
In the end the letter may have never been delivered, but the idea behind it is
clear: as the approval of the Salesian Constitutions hung in balance, Don
98 Neither the Ceccano nor the Genoa negotiations yielded any results. Gioachino BERTO,
Breve notizia del viaggio a Roma 1876, pp. 3-4, in ASC A0040501. On Don Bosco’s trip to
Ceccano see G. BERTO, Appunti del viaggio…, pp. 62-63 and E(m) IV, 252, n. 1936.
99 MB X 784; E II 1187
100 Berto mentions a letter destined for the pope, which he delivered on March 20:
“Venerdì 20 [marzo]. Al mattino Don Bosco col Conte Filippo Berardi visita ad un locale della
Certosa da lui comperato che vorrebbe affittarlo a D. Bosco. Io a S. Pietro a portar una Storia
d’Italia a Mons. Negrotti con una lettera del Papa da consegnarsi in proprie mani”. We have
no way to say it was our undated letter. Equally the idea that “Don Bosco aveva già il consenso
del S. Padre per aprire nuove case all’estero”, as mentioned in MB X 1272, has no basis in
documents and could have been inferred, wrongly, from the Hallinan letter. The pro-memoria
for the 12 March 1875 audience, which Ceria largely disregards (see MB XI 115), is found in
ASC A2210608.

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Don Bosco’s missionary call and China 251
Bosco wanted to impress the Holy Father that he needed the faculties to issue
dimissorial letters.
This same idea turns up in various other documents submitted to the
Roman Congregations in the months of February and March. Don Bosco had
drafted a Summary Historical Exposition, which he edited according to the
suggestions of Prof. Carlo Menghini, his lawyer, and had printed on February
26101. The document must have been particularly urgent and important, if Don
Bosco did not celebrate Mass on that day in order to finish the work. The
final chapter of his exposition dwells precisely on the issue of dimissorial let-
ters, noting how the Congregation, with 300 members engaged in ministry
outside the Turin archdiocese, needed to be able to move autonomously in
order to function. This is where the Hong Kong negotiations became helpful:
“Ora si sta trattando colla Sacra Congregazione di Propaganda Fide di aprire
case e scuole cristiane pei fanciulli dell’isola di Hong-Kong nella China e si
verrà alla definitiva conclusione appena, che la Clemenza del benemerito
Sommo Pontefice avrà concesso il sospirato favore della definitiva ap-
provazione di questa Pia Società Salesiana”102.
At the same time Don Bosco had finished drafting the Positio, again with
the help of his curia lawyer. He submitted it on March 7 to the Cardinals as-
signed to the Particular Congregation that would have to vet and approve the
Constitutions103. The concluding part is actually a Summary, the Riassunto
della Pia Società di S. Francesco di Sales nel 23 febbraio 1874 (or Resume of
the Pious Society of St. Francis de Sales of 23 February 1874), which deals
with the Society’s present situation vis-a-vis Ecclesiastical authorities, local
bishops and civil society. It also lists the various houses and oratories of the
Congregation. At the end the latest developments are highlighted:
“Presentemente: al presente sono conchiuse le trattative per aprire case pei
ragazzi cattolici dell’isola di Hong-Kong nella China, e per un orfanotrofio
nella città di Genova” 104.
Judging from the evidence available, Don Bosco asserted with startling
nonchalance that the “negotiations had been concluded”: did he mean that
101 Prof. Carlo Meneghini (+1896), Roman Canon and Curia lawyer. Friend of Don
Bosco and of the Salesians, he helped draft numerous documents to be presented especially to
the S. Congregation of Bishops and Regulars. In 1878, at the height of the Gastaldi contro-
versy, he was replaced by C. Leonori.
102 Cenno istorico sulla Congregazione di S. Francesco di Sales e relativi schiarimenti...,
MB X 954; OE XXV, (1872-1875), p. 250.
103 MB X 762-763.
104 MB X 947; OE XXV, (1872-1875), p. 383.

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252 Carlo Socol
nothing needed to be added to the negotiations, and it was just a matter of
waiting for certain conditions to be verified? Certainly it could not be taken to
mean that he had signed a contract for the opening of the houses, because he
had not. On the other hand Don Bosco is well known for inflating figures of
members and pupils to underscore a point. In his count he would include also
the projected growth, mixing the virtual with the real, and this specific case is
no exception: he was at pains to impress Rome that his Society was growing
numerically and expanding geographically and hence he needed the final ap-
proval105. Propaganda Fide knew that the door to Hong Kong was now closed
to Don Bosco but chose to keep silent on the whole thing. Don Bosco wrote
again to the Cardinals of the commission on 18 March clearly stating, among
other things, that the Society was expanding, negotiations to open houses in
“America, Africa and China were practically concluded”, the members had
reached 330 in number and the pupils 7,000, and hence he needed the final
approval of the Salesian Constitutions106. The Positio was discussed on March
24 and 31 and the Society obtained definitive approval on April 3, 1874.
Coincidentally, the previous day (April 2) Raimondi was able to write to
his Superior that the Christian Brothers had formally accepted to go to Hong
Kong: “after so much ado, Deo gratias”107. While Don Bosco left Rome soon
thereafter quite satisfied for having secured the final approval of the Constitu-
tions and the faculty to issue dimissorial letters for 10 years, Raimondi trav-
elled to Paris to sign the contract with the Christian Brothers, then returned to
Rome because of important, unfinished business: on 28 September 1874 the
Apostolic Prefecture of Hong Kong was erected into a Vicariate Apostolic,
and on 22 November Raimondi was consecrated as its first Vicar.
2.4. The old version as told in the Biographical Memoirs
So we now know the reason why Don Bosco’s negotiations with Rai-
mondi were left suspended. What shall we say, then, of the version trans-
mitted to us by the Biographical Memoirs? This is how the ‘facts’ are narrated
in connection with the dream of 1871-1872 on Patagonia, which Don Bosco
revealed for the first time in 1876:
“Then I thought of Hong Kong, and when Monsignor Raimondi, who was a
missionary there, came to Turin to find recruits, I did for a time enter into ne-
105 E(m) IV, p. 18.
106 E(m) IV, 1946. In 1874 the members were exactly 251. MB X 1231.
107 Raimondi to Marinoni 2.4.1874, in AG-PIME, AME 16, 1521.

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Don Bosco’s missionary call and China 253
gotiations with him, but they led nowhere because he wished to impose re-
strictions on our Congregation. In particular he wanted to stipulate that
whatever our Congregation might acquire as gift or purchase should become
mission property. For some time I thought that those islanders were the sav-
ages I had seen in my dream, but after some research I realized that my dream
resembled neither the land nor its inhabitants. The attempted negotiations
forced me to study new regions, but in vain”108.
The dream about Patagonia has come to us in two versions, one from
Don Giulio Barberis, written in 1876 shortly after he heard the narration from
Don Bosco, and the other from Don Giovanni Battista Lemoyne, who wrote
after 1883109. The text we find in the Memoirs is a combination of the two ac-
counts, the result of the “cumulative” method of blending the information
from different sources into a single narrative. Don Bosco reviewed neither the
two independent versions nor the combined one. The paragraph about Hong
Kong quoted above is a further late addition to the Lemoyne combined ver-
sion and should be treated with caution: it could, in fact, contain information
stemming from both Don Bosco and Lemoyne, with certain words directly at-
tributable to the former and integrations provided by the latter. It is not easy
to tell where Don Bosco ends and where Don Lemoyne takes over. The sen-
tence “I did for a time enter into negotiations with him”, and especially the
original Italian “per un istante mi lasciai andare a trattative con lui”, reflects
fairly accurately the way Don Bosco approached the negotiations with Rai-
mondi, and hence could be words heard from him. That the negotiations
never reached crucial intensity we derive from other contemporary sources,
and specifically the Barberis Cronichetta, which tell us that Don Bosco
treated this as one of several “projects” which did not materialize110. But the
108 BM X 544.
109 Giulio Barberis (1847-1927) entered the Oratory in 1861, professed in 1865 and was
ordained in 1870. He was a confidant of Don Bosco, with whom he was in constant contact
from 1874 to 1879: he collected facts and words of Don Bosco in a series of Cronachette,
widely used by biographers and especially by Lemoyne for his Biographical Memoirs. He
helped Don Bosco write a Memoir on Patagonia, for which he used history and geography
books sent by missionaries.
Giovanni Battista Lemoyne (1839-1916) was ordained priest in a diocese before be-
coming a Salesian in 1865. He was rector of Lanzo and a capable formator. In 1884 he
was called to Turin as secretary of the Superior Chapter and was in charge of collecting
documents – he collected 45 volumes known as Documenti – for a history of the Congregation.
He published several books, among whom a life of Don Bosco and the first eight volumes
of the Biographical Memoirs between 1898 and 1912: the 9th volume was published posthu-
mously in 1917.
110 Cronichetta, 6 December 1875, copied in Documenti 15, A064, reported with a dif-
ferent slant in MB XI 408.

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254 Carlo Socol
sentence: “[…] because [Raimondi] wished to impose restrictions on our
Congregation. In particular he wanted to stipulate that whatever our Congre-
gation might acquire as gift or purchase should become mission property
[...]” could well be an integration by Lemoyne on the basis of the fact that
Don Bosco consistently resisted being tied to conditions that he knew did not
favour the development of his enterprises. The documents, especially the
draft contract Raimondi prepared, tell the precise opposite, i.e. that the Sale-
sians could keep whatever income from the operation of the school for the de-
velopment of the same. Even Raimondi’s deal with the Christian Brothers
was quite generous in its financial arrangements, and was criticized as such
by his confreres.
2.5. Change of direction: to Argentina
In dealing with the Holy See to obtain the approval of the Salesian Con-
stitutions Don Bosco never mentioned plans or even the possibility of going
to Argentina. He started considering that possibility only in June 1874. We
should not be misled, in fact, by the impression of what he wrote to the Com-
mittee Members of the San Nicolás Boarding School on December 25 of that
same year:
“Corrono quattro anni dacché sono in familiari relazioni con S. E. il sig.
comm. Gio. Battista Gazzolo console argentino in Savona, e spesso i nostri
discorsi erano rivolti alla potente e vasta Repubblica, e nominando special-
mente la città di S. Nicolás come centro di altri punti, centro di commercio, i
cui cittadini vengono segnalati per moralità, buon volere e zelo per la buona
educazione della gioventù” 111.
This is one of those texts where past and present blend together and
hence it needs to be read carefully: to borrow terminology dear to Scripture
scholars, time here is conceived not some much as “chronos”, the chronolog-
ical unfolding of human events, as “kairos”, the period of grace granted by
God. What the text actually says is that Don Bosco first met Gazzolo some
time after March 1870, when he took up the post as consul general in Savona
and the Salesians opened a house in Alassio. Gazzolo being from Argentina, it
is not surprising that they discussed matters relating to that nation, which then
was attracting immigrants from Italy. The fact that Don Bosco used to travel
often to the Riviera, especially after the house of Varazze was founded in
111 Don Bosco to San Nicolás, 25.12.1874, E(m) IV, 2049.

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Don Bosco’s missionary call and China 255
1872, may have given the two more than one chance to meet. Gazzolo was in
friendly terms with Don Giovanni Battista Francesia112, the rector of that
house. But for all this Don Bosco was not particularly well acquainted with
him: suffice to say that in his 1874 correspondence – hence after 4 years he
had been “familiar” with him – he referred to him as Carlo, not Giovanni Bat-
tista Gazzolo. And, yes, they did discuss San Nicolás de los Arroyos. But that
was in mid-December 1874, days before Don Bosco wrote to the San Nicolás
board, when their October-November 1874 invitation to take over the
boarding school reached him. How did Don Bosco know so much about the
town? Don Ceccarelli, the parish priest, had provided the information: what
Don Bosco writes in his letter is, after all, but a summary of what Ceccarelli
had written to him. In other words, this text reveals Don Bosco’s familiar
style, his clever ability to create empathy at the start of his dialogue with the
members of the Founding Committee of San Nicolás, who were offering him
the management of a school on very advantageous terms, “without a time
limit”, and possibly opening for him the door to important developments in
the field of the missions.
So, while Don Bosco had been on friendly terms with Gazzolo for some
time already, the story of the first foray across the ocean did not actually
begin till the middle of 1874. That is when Don Bosco was still trying to
figure out how he could send his Salesians to Hong Kong. If doubts persist,
we need not look further than the Barberis Cronichetta‘s entry for 12 May
1875, where it states that “about a year earlier the Argentinean Consul […]
had contacted the Archbishop of Buenos Aires”113. This brings us back to the
month of June. On June 9, 1874 Don Bosco wrote a letter of introduction for
Fr. Denis Halinan, who was going back to his native Ireland, a letter dated
Turin, but likely written from Sampierdarena. On June 9, in fact, and part of
112 Giovanni Battista Francesia (1838-1930) was one of the first 16 pupils whom Don
Bosco assembled in 1859 to form the Salesian Society and was the first Salesian to obtain a
doctorate in literature. Among his pupils was Dominic Savio. In 1865 he joined the Superior
Council as Spiritual Director of the Society. He was rector of several houses, including
Varazze, and provincial of Piedmont-Lombardy from 1878-1902 and for a while also of
Veneto. He wrote dozens of books and pamphlets.
113 “Dopo le orazioni il Sig. D. Bosco parlò della missione di Buenos Aires. Da circa un
anno il console Argentino, Commendator Gazzolo di Savona avendo conosciuto il Sig. D.
Bosco a Varazze, e conosciuto lo spirito della Congregazione ne fece parola in America a
Buenos Aires coll’Arcivescovo e molti reverendi i quali si mostrarono entusiasti pei Salesiani e
bramarono che una loro colonia andasse a trapiantarsi nelle loro regioni”. Cronichetta, ASC
A0000101, p. 9. Also Don Francesia, while giving the wrong year – 1875 instead of 1874 –
confirms that the negotiations did not start earlier on. G. B. FRANCESIA, Vita breve e popo-
lare…, p. 263.

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256 Carlo Socol
the following day he was visiting that house. On the 10th he was in Varazze
and on the 12th in Alassio. Don Bosco visited Liguria several times during
1874, the first time shortly after his return from Rome. It was very likely that
he met Gazzolo on his second visit, between the 9th and the 12th of June: these
dates fit with the developments that ensued. The conversation focused on the
possibility of ministering to Italian immigrants in the church of the Mother of
Mercy in Buenos Aires. Wanting to have a better understanding of the place,
Don Bosco asked the consul to provide him with some books on the Argen-
tinean capital. In July he was at Lanzo for the annual retreat. In early August
he planned to meet Gazzolo in Mornese, but Gazzolo did not turn up. On Au-
gust 30, Gazzolo wrote to the Archbishop of Buenos Aires to introduce Don
Bosco and his work: the letter accurately describes the Society, the details
provided – presumably – by Don Bosco or Don Francesia. By separate dis-
patch he sent the Archbishop a catalogue of the Letture Cattoliche. On Sep-
tember 10, the consul wrote to Antonio Espinosa, Secretary General of the
Archdiocese114. Espinosa’s favourable reply to Gazzolo is dated October 10,
while Ceccarelli’s letter to Gazzolo signalling he welcomed the Salesians in
San Nicolás is dated October 26. Both letters reached Gazzolo in November.
A second letter from Ceccarelli, this time announcing an advantageous con-
tract, is dated November 11 and was delivered a month later115.
These are the letters that Don Bosco got from Gazzolo in mid De-
cember, when he again visited the houses on the Riviera, and that he had in
hand when he returned to Turin on December 19th. On the basis of these let-
ters by December 22, hence in a matter of days, he decided that the Salesians
would go to Argentina. From Don Bosco’s correspondence we know that be-
tween December 11 and 19 he visited Nizza, Alassio and Sampierdarena. No
mention is made of Varazze, but he surely visited there, and there – we have
to believe the belated Varazze “Chronicle” for this – Don Bosco met Gazzolo,
received the letters, was briefed and – presumably – exchanged ideas and in-
formation116. Don Bosco prepared a reply for Mgr. Espinosa which he dated
December 22, the very day he announced his decision to the Superior
114 MB X 1263-1266; E(m) IV, 2035; the first of Gazzolo’s letters in A. M. GONZALEZ,
Origen de las Misiones Salesianas…, pp. 90-92.
115 The letter of Ceccarelli to Gazzolo dated December 2, the three documents and
two letters for Don Bosco he attached, one from himself and one from Committee President
Jose Benitez, arrived after the new year. It took one month for letters to travel from Argentina
to Italy.
116 E(m) IV, pp. 361-364; Varazze “Chronicle” in ASC F940. It is actually not a chronicle
of the 1874 events, but rather of the 1931 events, when a plaque was placed in the dining room
to commemorate the meeting between Gazzolo and Don Bosco.

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Don Bosco’s missionary call and China 257
Council, and letters to Ceccarelli and the San Nicolás Committee, both dated
25 December. He sent them to Gazzolo, who received them on the 27th and
who intended to forward them to Argentina by the French postal ship de-
parting January 8, after Don Bosco had made certain corrections: he had,
among other things, referred to Giovanni Battista Gazzolo by a wrong first
name, as already mentioned117. The news was subsequently communicated to
the Rectors on 28 January and to the entire Valdocco community on the fol-
lowing day.
Why the speed? The doggedness with which Don Bosco chased the un-
likely chance of going to Hong Kong and the speed with which he decided
for Argentina suggest that he considered the Society ready to branch out over-
seas. The paths he pursued to go to Hong Kong were leading nowhere. Now
a new avenue opened before him that seemed promising and within imme-
diate reach:
“[…] several Missions were proposed to us in China, India, Australia, and
elsewhere in America. But for a number of reasons, and especially since our
Congregation is just starting, we selected a mission in South America, in the
Argentine Republic” 118.
These are the reasons Don Bosco gave during the farewell speech to
the departing missionaries on 11 November 1875. The first step across the
ocean was in itself challenging enough even without the addition of cultural
differences or the difficulty of a totally unfamiliar language. By opting for Ar-
gentina he was choosing a less steep path for his first missionaries. This much
we have from Don Bosco: for the rest we have to reconstruct, because the ac-
counts of what actually occurred during those months of important decision-
making is not always clear or consistent with fact. The possibility and attrac-
tion of a mission to unidentified “savage tribes” possibly beckoned to him
during the mid-December Varazze meeting with Gazzolo or subsequent brief-
ings by him, when Don Bosco, having received an invitation to go to San
Nicolás, enquired about the whereabouts of that town. The expression
“savage tribes” begins to appear and becomes familiar from the time of the
announcement of the project, in late January 1875. The perceived proximity
117 The Biographical Memoirs offer an unclear, even contradictory account of these
events. Gazzolo reportedly visited Turin towards the end of 1874 “to officially ask him to set
up institutes in Argentina…”. MB X 1273. Elsewhere it says that Gazzolo sent the documenta-
tion to Don Bosco, “who read it to the Superior Chapter the evening of December 22”. MB X
1302. Braido and Desramaut affirm that Don Bosco got the entire documentation from Gazzolo
while journeying between Alassio and Sampierdarena.
118 MB XI 384.

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258 Carlo Socol
of San Nicolás with the tribes gave him the possibility of testing the method
he had learnt from Comboni, a method that, suitably adapted, would allow
him to put to full advantage the experience he had built up at Valdocco in the
attempt of branching out to mission work: educate young tribesmen in his
boarding schools and send them back to evangelize their own people.
3. China in Don Bosco’s dreams, anxieties and words
That was the strategy he was mulling over by day and – possibly –
dreaming of by night. In fact there was also a dream, the dream of 1871-1872,
to which we briefly referred in connection with the Raimondi negotiations.
3.1. The dream of 1871-1872 and its paradigmatic value
This is Don Bosco’s first ‘missionary dream’, about throngs of savage
natives who kill the missionaries, hacking them to pieces and brandishing
chunks of their flesh on the barbs of their long spears, followed by the arrival
of a group of Salesian missionaries led by a band of young boys, rosary beads
in their hands, advancing cheerfully towards the hordes, by whom they are
warmly welcomed and who readily accept the missionaries’ admonitions119. A
“vision”, according to the Biographical Memoirs, that convinced Don Bosco
to launch his missionary apostolate in Patagonia: God was showing him the
way in a clear, detailed way120. Contemporaries who lived the Valdocco expe-
rience harboured, and perhaps fuelled, supernatural expectations: in fact, even
before Don Bosco mentioned the dream, Barberis observed him “speaking all
the time about America”, leading him to surmise that Don Bosco had received
some “revelation from the Lord”121.
While acknowledging that Don Bosco believed the dream to be a true
omen, historians nowadays are less inclined than former generations of
chroniclers and biographers to think it was precisely this dream that made
him decide for Patagonia, or that it offered clear indications of future paths122.
Don Bosco had to go through a long and tentative process of discernment be-
fore he could effectively establish a link between dream and reality as he
119 MB X 54-55.
120 Ibid., pp. 53, 1267.
121 Cronichetta, 02.02.1876, p. 47. ASC, A0000104.
122 P. STELLA, Don Bosco nella storia…, p. 169. F. DESRAMAUT, Don Bosco en son
temps…, p. 968 and footnote n. 111.

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Don Bosco’s missionary call and China 259
gradually came to perceive it, and as such under constant review. The first
overseas destination was Argentina, and the decision was taken on the basis
of practical considerations. The allure of Patagonia emerged gradually, from a
variety of factors unconnected with the dream. In Don Bosco’s mind Ar-
gentina and Patagonia were separate realities and the riverside town of San
Nicolás del los Arroyos only gradually became – in his plan – the base for
launching forays among the Patagonian “savages” roaming the wild 300km
away123. Barberis affirms that the dream “later” made Don Bosco “think […]
about the Patagonian missions”. When he decided for Argentina, on 22 De-
cember 1874, he may have entertained vague ideas about the existence of un-
specified native tribes in the general vicinity of San Nicolás garnered from
his conversations with Gazzolo. Uncertainty about the land and its savage in-
habitants prevails for most of 1875: in his conversation with the Holy Father,
in April 1875, Don Bosco spoke of Buenos Ayres, not of Patagonia124. The
first, vague references to Patagonia are in a letter to a benefactor dated 25
September, the speech of 11 November, and shortly thereafter in a letter to the
Association for the Propagation of the Faith in Lyon: as already mentioned,
the Association had refused him a subsidy on the ground that the Salesians
were heading for Argentina, not for mission lands, to which Don Bosco
replied that their “primary aim” was actually Patagonia and the Pampas125.
So, when the Pampas and the Patagonians made their first appearance,
the decision to accept Buenos Aires and San Nicolás was already one year
old. And it would take another six months, in mid 1876, for the Patagonian
project to become conviction. That is when the dream of 1871-72 surfaced.
The first to hear it was pope Pius IX during a later audience among the three
he granted Don Bosco in April-May 1876. Discussion about the Patagonian
project, rejected by the Prefect of Propaganda Fide, was central to the deci-
sion of revealing the dream to the pope. Don Bosco next told it to Don
Francesco Bodrato on July 30, who in turn confided it to Don Barberis. Three
days later Don Bosco narrated the dream to Barberis himself, who immedi-
ately put it into writing with the benefit of having heard it twice within days.
123 Don Bosco to Franchi 10.05.1876, E III, 1453. San Nicolás actually lay some 600km
from the northernmost border of Patagonia. The Pampas, who inhabited the land north of
Patagonia along the Rio Negro and Rio Colorado, were somewhat nearer. Still in 1880 Don
Bosco described San Nicolás as being “at a short distance from the savages”, “the last Argen-
tinean town bordering with the Pampas”. E III 2033; MB XIV 623-636.
124 Don Bosco to Gazzolo, 10.4.1875, E(m) IV, 2112.
125 E(m) IV, 2187, 2227. He solicited financial help also from Propaganda, E(m) IV,
2178; E III 1485; Don Bosco to Costamagna, quoted in P. STELLA, Don Bosco nella storia…,
p. 180.

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260 Carlo Socol
Don Bosco did not make a note of his dream, but indicated that it had oc-
curred “between four and five years earlier”, i.e. in 1871 or 1872. Internal ev-
idence suggests it could have been in late 1873, “since at that time – Barberis
records Don Bosco saying – I was negotiating with Mons. Raymondi [sic] re-
garding the Mission of Hong Kong”. The dream, therefore, occurred in the
years after the Vatican Council, when requests and visits from missionaries
were becoming more frequent, the Salesian Society experienced sustained
growth and Don Bosco began to concretely think of the possibility of
branching out abroad. In this scenario, the nocturnal dream – far from being a
sudden vision – is seen as the natural development of Don Bosco “day-
dreaming”, as his thoughts started to spill over into the night126.
Don Bosco confessed to having given scant attention to the dream at
first, but then, over the years, he thought about it and wondered whether it
had anything to do with Daniele Comboni’s proposal of 1870, or the negotia-
tions he was having with Timoleone Raimondi (1873-74) regarding Hong
Kong. How on earth could he think that Hong Kong was populated by man-
eating savages dressed in animal skins is difficult to imagine: had he read the
Museo delle Missioni Cattoliche, he should have known better, for there one
finds an 1858 description of a vibrant, commercially active and well orga-
nized Colony. By the same token he would have also found a description of
the Patagones and of the Fueghini not unlike the one he later came across127.
Be things as they were, he next came to suspect that the dream might refer to
the visit of Bishop Matthew Quinn of Bathurst in Australia, from whom he
specifically inquired about the characteristics of Australian natives. Mgr.
Quinn had been in Turin in summer 1874 to discuss the possibility of en-
trusting to Don Bosco the formation of young people from Ireland to be des-
tined to missions where the English language was dominant128. This is as
126 P. BRAIDO, Don Bosco prete dei giovani…, vol. II, p. 129; Arthur LENTI, Introductory
Essay, in Eugene M. BROWN (ed.), Dreams, Visions & Prophecies of Don Bosco. New Rochelle
1986, p. xlix.
Francesco Bodrato (1823-1880), a widower and primary school teacher from Mornese,
was accepted by Don Bosco as a member of the Salesian Society. Ordained priest in 1869, he
worked as a teacher and, briefly, as economer general. In 1876 he left for Argentina as head of
the second missionary expedition and was put in charge of Salesian institutions in Buenos
Aires. Plagued by ill health, he died at the height of a civil war that ravaged the capital. See
Francesco BODRATO, Epistolario. Introduzione, testi critici e note a cura di Brenno Casali.
Roma, LAS 1995.
127 “Museo” 18 (25 aprile 1858) 281-283.
128 MB X 1270. In July 1875 Don Bosco asserted to having accepted a Mission in
Australia. E(m) IV, 2155. As late as December 1875 Don Bosco entertained the idea of ac-
cepting mission work in Australia, with Mons. Quinn. Cronichetta- Barberis, ASC A0000103,
pp. 36-37.

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Don Bosco’s missionary call and China 261
much as Barberis heard from Don Bosco: Lemoyne’s version is far more
elaborate, but not for this is it more reliable. The reference to Mgr. Quinn
brings us up to the time when Don Bosco was in contact with Gazzolo and
got an unsolicited invitation from San Nicolás de los Arroyos. Don Bosco,
eager to know more, asked Gazzolo for some books “on Buenos Aires”, but
they were not quite what he was looking for. He eventually got the books he
wanted from the missionaries of his first expedition and, based on those, in
May 1876 he prepared a first report on Patagonia for Card. Franchi of Propa-
ganda Fide. Upon returning from Rome, he commissioned Barberis to write a
more complete report for the cardinal. It was ready by mid August129.
At this point the research thoroughly convinced him that what he had
seen in the dream was Patagonia and its native inhabitants, and we detect in
Don Bosco possibly the clearest perception that he had found the mission
land that God had shown him. Hardly able to contain his excitement, on Au-
gust 13 he wrote memorable, if somewhat over-elated lines to Don Cagliero
regarding the project and the effects of his promotion of the same:
“Sono circa 200 che dimandano andar in Patagonia. Tutta l’Italia e l’Europa
politica e religiosa parla del nostro progetto per la Patagonia. Dio lo vuole, e
ci voglia aiutare a fare la parte nostra”130.
As we mentioned, at first Don Bosco felt disinclined to give the dream
much attention, nonetheless the impression it had left on him was so vivid
that he felt he could not disregard it altogether, “because my previous experi-
ence persuaded me that what I had seen would come true”. The conclusions
of his determined search left him “in no doubt as to the land towards which
[he] should direct [his] thoughts and efforts”131.
This first of five “missionary dreams”, according to some authors at
least, had considerable resonance in the history of the Congregation. For Don
Bosco it came to mean a call to evangelize native peoples and it provided him
with an intuition, or perhaps a confirmation, of a new method of evangelizing
by educating the young. The dream fired up Don Bosco’s action and resolve
and had deep and certainly not fleeting repercussions in the troubled history
of the Vicariate Apostolic of Patagonia. For more than one generation Patag-
onia became a by-word of missionary call and enterprise in the Salesian
129 E III 61-62, 1455. Giovanni BOSCO, La Patagonia e le Terre Australi del Continente
Americano. Introduzione e testo critico a cura di Jesús Borrego. Roma, LAS 1988. Regarding
the books Don Bosco used, cf ibid., pp. 9-16 and A. DA SILVA FERREIRA, Due sogni sulle mis-
sioni della Patagonia…, pp. 104-105.
130 Don Bosco to Cagliero, 13.8.1876, E III 1483.
131 MB X 1268-1269.

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262 Carlo Socol
world. Its undeniable charismatic contents stimulated the energy of mission-
aries and inspired their self-confidence as they faced a host of problems132.
And yet this, as the other dreams, never really solved Don Bosco’s problems:
he had to find the way, secure the means and surmount the obstacles133. Un-
derstandably, the main protagonists in the mission field – Giovanni Cagliero,
Giuseppe Fagnano, Francesco Bodrato, Giuseppe Vespignani, Luigi Lasagna
– were perplexed and held divergent views on what to make of this and other
dreams: Cagliero, the more down-to-earth among them, considered them as
“ideals”, while Vespignani, faithful to the detail, would consider them as in-
dispensable step by step guidelines134.
The 150 odd dreams contained in the Biographical Memoirs135 have not
been seriously studied in an systematic way. The text of only ten dreams –
those that have been either written or personally corrected by Don Bosco and
a few others – have been subjected to critical scrutiny136. It is not the aim of
this essay to delve into this problem area in detail, but the dream of 1871-72
shares a common, double hurdle with most other dreams, including those
about China, viz. textual tradition and interpretation.
Two accounts of this dream have reached us in manuscript form. These
two texts served as the basis for the new “cumulative” version produced by
the biographer, the versio recepta. The earlier, shorter version is undoubtedly
closer to the facts and was put into writing by Don Barberis immediately
after he heard it: written in the first person and dated 31 July 1876 – it may
have actually been written shortly thereafter – it has the freshness and the
immediacy of a dream’s account. The second, longer version was penned by
132 A. DA SILVA FERREIRA, Due sogni sulle missioni della Patagonia…, pp. 101, 103; ID.,
Patagonia, realtà e mito…, pp. 11-12; M. WIRTH, Da Don Bosco ai nostri giorni…, p. 238.
133 Alberto CAVIGLIA, Don Bosco: profilo storico. Torino, SEI 1920, p. 73.
134 A. DA SILVA FERREIRA, Due sogni sulle missioni della Patagonia…, p. 102.
Giuseppe Vespignani (1854-1932) moved to Valdocco shortly after his ordination in
1876. He remained one year with Don Bosco, which he described in his Un anno alla scuola di
Don Bosco (1930) and then departed for South America as master of novices with the third
missionary expedition. He led a very active life as rector in Buenos Aires and Provincial. In
1922 he was elected to the Superior Chapter as councillor for professional and agricultural
schools. E. VALENTINI – A. RODINÒ, Dizionario biografico…, pp. 293-294.
135 The dreams are 120 for Desramaut, in Francis DESRAMAUT, Don Bosco and the spiri-
tual life. New Rochelle, Don Bosco Publications 1979, p. 34; “not less than 153” (193 is a
typo) for J. De Vasconcellos, in José DE VASCONCELLOS, Don Bosco sognò Brasilia?, in C. SE-
MERARO (ed.), Don Bosco e Brasilia…, p. 132.
136 Critical textual studies of dreams: Cecilia ROMERO, I sogni di Don Bosco. Edizione
critica, presentazione di Pietro Stella. Torino, LDC 1978 (for the dreams written or corrected
by Don Bosco, ten in all). A. LENTI, I sogni di Don Bosco…, pp. 85-130 (for the missionary
dreams); A. DA SILVA FERREIRA, Due sogni sulle missioni della Patagonia…, pp. 101-139 (for
the dream of 1871-1872 and that of 1883).

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Don Bosco’s missionary call and China 263
Don Lemoyne. Internal evidence compels us to date its redaction not earlier
than 1883-1885, when the Vicariate Apostolic of Patagonia was finally estab-
lished. In it, in fact, we see an obviously battle-weary Don Bosco, who
relishes the chance to reminisce about the uphill fight he had to wage to
convince Roman doubters of his Patagonian projects, only to be proved right
by facts: a sense of satisfaction emerges from the account, which appears
somewhat overstated and sometimes factually wrong137. This eclectic docu-
ment, a post factum reading of the events, contrasts with the Barberis version,
which, being closer to the source, is less likely to be polluted by later addi-
tions or interpretations and hence is a more reliable record of Don Bosco’s
oral narrative 138.
The interpretation of this dream is even more challenging. Few people
today would insist that Don Bosco’s dreams in general were plain “visions”
without further qualification. Already back in 1936 Don Eugenio Ceria distin-
guished “dreams that were not really dreams; dreams that were nothing but
dreams; and dreams of a revelatory character”139. Even in dreams of a “reve-
latory character” one can easily assume the presence of a human element, the
fruit of human psychology, and a revelatory one, supposedly coming from
above, the two mingled together. Don Bosco himself was concerned about
these issues. Telling the two apart is not easy. And even when one believes he
has successfully isolated possible revelatory elements, how does one deter-
mine their precise relevance and meaning? In the case of the dream of 1871-
72, what conclusions can one draw considering that, as we have seen, it did
not substantially come about the way Don Bosco thought it would, both re-
garding the target (the Patagonian “savage” tribes) and the method of evange-
lization (colleges for young “savages”)? Was Don Bosco’s endorsement of
the Comboni plan historically contingent? What is the dream’s relevant part:
137 The Lemoyne version casts Cardinal Alessandro Barnabò (1801-1874) as critic of the
Patagonia project. Barnabò died in Rome on 24 February 1874, while Don Bosco was awaiting
an audience from him. The Patagonia project was discussed in 1876. Opposition came from
Barnabò’s successor, Cardinal Alessandro Franchi (1874-1878), who preferred the Salesians
accept a Vicariate Apostolic in China. A. DA SILVA FERREIRA, Due sogni sulle missioni della
Patagonia…, p. 116; MB XII 192.
138 Typical of this “eclectic” approach is the following sentence, taken verbatim from a
May 12, 1875 entry – hence before Don Bosco narrated the dream – in the Barberis
Cronichetta: “Finalmente nel 1874 il Console Argentino a Savona…, avendo conosciuto Don
Bosco e lo spirito della Congregazione Salesiana, ne fece parola in America coll’Arcivescovo
di Buenos Aires e a molti sacerdoti, i quali si accesero di entusiasmo per i Salesiani ed
espressero il desiderio che una colonia di questi andasse a trapiantarsi nelle loro regioni”. See
MB X 1269, where the account, originally written in the third person, switches from the first
to third . Cronichetta, 12.05.1875, in ASC A0000101.
139 MB XVII 7.

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264 Carlo Socol
the general theme (call to the missions, extending the Valdocco experience),
or the single details (the land, the target, the method of evangelization)? If the
nature of the dream is “revelatory”, why would the land be hinted but not
clearly revealed? The problems are endless and Don Bosco himself had to
contend with them, even with regard to his dreams about China140.
If the revelatory content of the dream, and other dreams, remains elusive
and difficult to pinpoint and to evaluate, there are aspects of the dream and
contents of the narrative that are reliable, solid and useful: the dreams nar-
rated to the young, for instance, have undisputed pedagogical and pastoral
value141; those regarding the future and the mission of the Congregation, as is
the case here, have an equally undoubted spiritual value, which may truly be
considered the central theme of Don Bosco’s dreams142. In other words, this
and other dreams could be above all spiritual messages rather than prophe-
cies, and as such a confirmation of what Don Bosco taught in his writings,
talks or spiritual direction. Several authors have taken pains to identify the
chief elements of this spiritual content, which may be summarized as follows:
“1. Salvation of souls as priority and goal of mission, integral human devel-
opment as means to achieve this (souls, education as a catalyst of social
change, the politics of the ‘Our Father’);
2. The preferential option of the Salesians for the young in need and the
method of evangelizing through the young;
3. The characteristics of a Salesian missionary spirituality: work, temperance,
kindness, chastity, etc.”.
These may well be the timeless riches contained in Don Bosco’s dreams,
and his five missionary dreams in particular: true inspirations from God,
140 Selected bibliography on Don Bosco’s dreams: Pietro STELLA, Don Bosco’s dreams: a
historico-documentary analysis of selected samples. New Rochelle, Salesiana Publishers 1996
(Italian original 1969); C. ROMERO, I sogni di Don Bosco…; E. M. BROWN, Dreams, visions and
prophecies of Don Bosco…; C. SEMERARO (ed.), Don Bosco e Brasilia…, San Juan BOSCO, Los
sueños de Don Bosco. Estudio introductorio y notas de Fausto JIMENEZ. Madrid 20023. See also
comments in P. BRAIDO, Don Bosco prete dei giovani…, vol. I, pp. 369-372; II pp. 630-635.
141 P. BRAIDO, Don Bosco prete dei giovani…, vol. I, p. 371.
142 “Instead of attributing a miraculous origin to the dreams told by Don Bosco, it is
better to see them, as long as they have some moral or spiritual value, as documents of his
thought, written surely not without the help of the grace of the Lord. In this way they will not
delude us. Let us leave to psychologists and to experts in mystical theology the task of deter-
mining the extent of the intervention of God in their unfolding. This undertaking is infinitely
delicate and it is understandable that several have made futile attempts in this matter”. F.
DESRAMAUT, Don Bosco and the spiritual life…, pp. 34-35. More, interesting insights on Don
Bosco’s dreams may be found in Francis DESRAMAUT, Don Bosco negli ultimi anni della sua
vita (1885-1887), in C. SEMERARO (ed.), Invecchiamento e vita salesiana in Europa. Torino-
Leumann, LDC 1990, pp. 175-195.

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Don Bosco’s missionary call and China 265
fruits not so much of supernatural visions but of a life of faith and dedication
in answer to God’s call, the real “treasure hidden in the field” (Mt. 13,44)143.
3.2. Concern and dreams about China
In the five “missionary dreams” scholars have seen reflected Don
Bosco’s hopes and prospects for the development of the Salesian Society es-
pecially in the “period of consolidation” of his enterprise, comprising mainly
the 1870’s and early 80’s, the most active years in his life. The outlook and
dimension of these dreams are worldwide, often represented by fantastic
travels to far flung and unknown lands. The dreams portray an idealized vi-
sion of the Salesian work in the world. Logically, they are in continuity with
the class of dreams known as “vocation dreams”. Seen as such, they are in-
dicative of Don Bosco and the Salesian Society’s vocation and apostolate.
Don Bosco, consistently prudent in his assessment of his earlier dreams, as-
signed great importance especially to the latter ones. He narrated them with
absolute seriousness even to the General Chapter and sometimes spent con-
siderable effort in editing or having them edited: he was convinced that
through them the Lord was calling him and the Salesian Society to fulfil a
special mission. Therein we see reflected the anxieties, the convictions and
hopes of Don Bosco. Dreams of this type appeared in the 1850’s (dream of
the wheel), grew in the 1870’s, when the Congregation was expanding, and
peaked in the 1880’s, when distance from the actual mission field and phys-
ical decline combined to intensify the phenomenon. These later dreams, to-
gether with Don Bosco’s frequent reminders expressing his vision of the pre-
sent and future expansion of the Salesian Society, are accompanied by fears,
fruit of spiritual and moral concerns, not just about the effectiveness of the
Society’s apostolate, but about its very survival, which explains the “strongly
cautionary prophetic words” in which his expectations are couched144.
There is a definite link between the dreams and the challenges Don
Bosco set to himself, the difficulties he faced, the anxieties, the circumstances
he was going through, his forward-looking plans, his declining health, his ap-
proaching end, or even certain immediate events. Nobody has better captured
the psychology and mind-set of Don Bosco in his last years (1886-1888), un-
able to be physically present and in command in the mission field, than P.
143 See A. LENTI, I sogni di Don Bosco…, 126-130; P. BRAIDO, Il progetto operativo…,
pp. 7-12, 18-28; Jesús BORREGO, Recuerdos de San Juan Bosco a los primeros missioneros.
Roma, LAS 1984, pp. 16-40; DESRAMAUT, Il pensiero missionario di Don Bosco…, pp. 49-61.
144 A. LENTI, I sogni di Don Bosco…, p. 92. MB XVII 30-31.

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266 Carlo Socol
Braido, who is of the opinion that it makes more sense to try to know Don
Bosco better in order to better understand his dreams, rather than the other
way around. On this, which could be regarded as another useful key to under-
standing Don Bosco’s dreams in this period, and the missionary dreams in
particular, Braido wrote:
“Meno presente fisicamente nel campo del lavoro effettivo, don Bosco lo era
con i messaggi a voce o per iscritto e, idealmente, con l’immagine che i suoi
figli portavano nel pensiero, nel cuore, nel loro stile di azione. Ma c’era di
più. I vincoli dell’attività ridotta e dei disagi di salute anziché bloccare sem-
bravano mettere le ali ai disegni diurni e ai sogni notturni, questi specchio o
prolungamento di quelli. È un fenomeno, del resto, che sembra aver preso
particolare sviluppo proprio a partire dagli anni del declino fisico. In
prevalenza, i sogni riguardano due aspetti fondamentali, in qualche modo
esaltanti per il presente e preoccupanti per il futuro: la diffusione delle opere
salesiane nel mondo e la fedeltà dei salesiani alle ispirazioni originarie. […]
Egli ne parla volentieri ai vicini, i membri dei Capitoli, superiore e generale, a
don Lemoyne, poi nell’ ultimo scorcio di vita a don Viglietti, che registra, af-
fascinato, raccogliendo anche incubi e allucinazioni”145.
In the 1871-72 dream “about Patagonia” one finds no reference to
China, even though for a while Don Bosco thought it might refer to the
vicinity of Hong Kong. The first such reference is found in the 1876 dream
“of the raging bull”, which he narrated at the end of the summer retreat at
Lanzo, when, having sent his first missionaries to America, he was contem-
plating an almost simultaneous expansion in Asia. In the dream, invited to
stand on a huge bolder in the middle of a boundless field, he was shown “the
harvest awaiting the Salesians”. Asked to face the four points of the compass,
among other things he saw in the east were “women whose feet were so tiny
they could barely stand or walk”. It was an obvious reference to China146.
Don Bosco’s interest in Asia and China in this first, programmatic stage had
waned by May 1877, since by then he had come to accept that his planned es-
tablishment of a mission in America, and Patagonia in particular, was far
more demanding than he had anticipated in terms of timing, financial and
human resources. His concern towards Asia is discernible again as from mid
1883, when he was finally able to secure the planting of his own mission ter-
145 P. BRAIDO, Don Bosco prete dei giovani…, vol. II, pp. 630-631.
146 MB XII 466. Mr. Lo Pa-hong, the benefactor who invited the Salesians to go to
Shanghai, quoted this particular – “we are the people with little feet seen by Don Bosco” – in
a letter drafted by Fr. Luigi Versiglia in August 1920 in order to convince the then reluctant
Superior Chapter to send Salesians to open their first house there. Lo to Rinaldi 30.08.1920
in ASC F726.

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Don Bosco’s missionary call and China 267
ritories in Argentina. This second stage, less programmatic and more vi-
sionary, would extend into the remaining years of his life.
In the dream of 29-30 August 1883 Don Bosco travels across the entire
Latin American Continent, in what gradually became the dream about Latin
America par excellence147. China is mentioned in passing, early on, in a pas-
sage added to the manuscript by Don Bosco in his own handwriting. The
dream had been first written by Lemoyne, but underwent extensive and mul-
tiple re-elaborations, with the result that the final draft is five times longer
and contains significant new elements unmentioned in the first, shorter draft.
Don Bosco attached great importance to it: he had just reached or was about
to reach the end of a lengthy struggle to have his own independent mission
territory, the Vicariate Apostolic of Patagonia, where the Salesians could
carry out their work autonomously with Cagliero at its head. He submitted a
formal application to the Holy See on July 29, 1883. That same July the Sale-
sian Society set foot in Niteroi, Brazil. News of Rome’s approval of the Vic-
ariate was communicated to the Salesian procurator in Rome on August 27.
We do not know when the news reached Don Bosco. He had the dream on the
night of August 30, vigil of St. Rose of Lima, either while awaiting Rome’s
response or when he had just been informed of the felicitous results. Four
days later Don Bosco narrated it to the members of the 3rd General Chapter
and Don Lemoyne produced the first, shorter draft. The extensive re-writing
(the text was sent to the missions in America for checking, and possibly for
integrations), the elaborate dialogues and the articulate considerations are in-
dicators that Don Bosco wished to use it for instructive purposes. Don
Lemoyne produced the final draft and packaged the story much like a three
act drama, the literary form that was his forte. It was used by Salesian provin-
cials in America to justify policies and by civil governments to push for de-
velopment plans, notably the foundation of Brazil’s capital, Brasilia148.
In it China features in passing, in what is actually a personal consideration
of Don Bosco that aptly summarizes some of his key ideas on missions. In his
dream he finds several people gathered in what looked like a recreation hall
discussing a variety of topics. The crisis of Catholic missions is brought up:
“A lengthy conversation centered on the hordes of savages in Australia, the
Indies, China, Africa, and more especially America, who in countless num-
bers are presently entombed in the darkness of death.
«Europe», said one of the speakers with much conviction, «Christian Europe,
the great mistress of civilization and Catholicism, seems to have lost all in-
147 A. DA SILVA FERREIRA, Due sogni sulle missioni della Patagonia…, p. 103.
148 Ibid. p. 120; C. SEMERARO (ed.), Don Bosco e Brasilia…

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268 Carlo Socol
terest in the foreign missions. Few are those who have enough enthusiasm to
brave long journeys and unknown lands to save the souls of millions of people
redeemed by the Son of God, Jesus Christ». Another said, «How many idol-
aters in America alone live miserably outside the Church, far from the knowl-
edge of the Gospel […]»”149.
We have here Don Bosco’s theology of the kingdom of God, his under-
standing of the Church’s nature and role, his anxiety for souls, his conviction
– typical of 19th Century European Catholicism – that there could be no true
civilization without Christianity, and finally the regret that Europe no longer
seemed interested in fulfilling its evangelizing and civilizing role150. In this
view, peoples not yet evangelized are lumped together with the “savages”, or
“idolaters”: the two do not differ much. It would be interesting to know pre-
cisely what had given Don Bosco the impression that Europe was no longer
the fervent evangelizer and civilizer he had praised in his Storia Ecclesiastica
decades earlier, and how he consequently was suggesting that the Salesian
Society had a role to play in reversing this trend. Earlier that year he had been
through a triumphant fundraising trip in France. He had been in Paris, the “in-
tellectual metropolis of Europe”; in Lyon he had had to press vigorously
merely to get the attention of – leave alone subsidies from – the gentlemen of
the Association for the Propagation of Faith. Of course, since 1879 France
had become “Republican France”: secularized, anti-clerical, and at risk of re-
linquishing her leadership in missionary endeavour151.
China features prominently in the fourth missionary dream, which oc-
curred in Mathi, where Don Bosco was resting, the date unknown. He nar-
rated it to the members of the Superior Chapter the evening of 2 July 1885.
Things were finally looking up in the missions: the Vicariate Apostolic of
Patagonia had received papal approval and Giuseppe Fagnano’s men were be-
ginning to settle in the newly erected Prefecture Apostolic of Southern Patag-
onia and of Tierra del Fuego in spite of serious difficulties. Don Bosco had
appointed Cagliero, now a bishop, his vicar for all the houses in America. Re-
quests were pouring in from many places for new foundations. Don Bosco
needed no convincing that Salesian work was destined to spread worldwide
and so his eyes started turning to other Continents.
149 MB XVI 385; BM XVI 304. Critical text in C. ROMERO, I sogni di Don Bosco…, pp.
81-93; A. DA SILVA FERREIRA, Due sogni sulle missioni della Patagonia…, 117-139. Additions
to the text were appended as late as 1922 at the insistence of missionaries from S. America.
Ibid., pp. 136-137.
150 F. DESRAMAUT, Il pensiero missionario di Don Bosco…, pp. 54-61; A. LENTI, I sogni
di Don Bosco…, pp. 126-130.
151 MB XVI 68, 258; P. BRAIDO, Don Bosco prete dei giovani…, vol. II, pp. 508, 517-
518; F. DESRAMAUT, Don Bosco en son temps…, pp. 1172-1176.

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Don Bosco’s missionary call and China 269
Also this text is a composite one, redacted by Lemoyne in different
stages and preserved in at least two versions and one French translation,
which had been commissioned by Don Bosco for count Louis A. Colle of
Toulon, a great admirer and benefactor. In the dream Don Bosco assists in
three scenes presided over by Angels, each representing one of the continents
of Asia, Africa and Oceania. The one that struck him most was the “Angel of
Arphaxad” – representing China, he would later conclude – standing on a
high mountain. At the foot of the mountains were peoples speaking the most
diverse and unknown languages. Among the many places he was shown were
Hong Kong, Macao “at the mouth of the infinitely vast sea and facing a gi-
gantic mountain from which one could see China”, and the Chinese empire.
The Angel was sounding the missionary call, inviting the Salesians to “fight
the battles of the Lord and gather all the peoples in his granaries”152.
Don Bosco was intrigued by this mysterious Arphaxad, whose name, he
claimed, he had never heard, a particular that induced him to believe the
dream to be a genuine revelation: how could he have made up such an exotic
name all by himself! He commissioned cleric Angelo Festa to undertake re-
search in bible, history, geography books and journals, to try to shed light on
what people or peoples on earth Arphaxad was connected with. “At last, he
believed he had found the key to the mystery in the first volume of
Rohrbacher, who states that the Chinese are descendants of Arphaxad”. Don
Bosco believed – or found it convenient to believe – that he had seen China:
he looked no further. On 10 August 1885 he wrote in French to count Colle:
“Our friend Louis – the deceased son of the count, his guide in the dream –
has taken me for a stroll to the centre of Africa, the land of Cam, as he said,
and to the land of Arphaxad, or China”. The Salesian Central Archives still
keep a document entitled I Cinesi discendenti di Arphaxad, the results
of Festa’s research, which may have been “serious” in the good cleric’s inten-
tion but is actually amateurish. On the left column there is a French transla-
tion. Don Bosco corrected it marginally and it was integrally included in the
Biographical Memoirs sourcebook, the Documenti per scrivere la storia di
Don Giovanni Bosco. Don Ceria eventually chose to publish only edited
extracts in the Biographical Memoirs, and added his own comments or con-
siderations153.
Arphaxad, it turned out, was a son of Sem and hence a nephew of Noah.
After the flood, according to the “Table of Nations” (1 Ch, 1,4-24) the three
152 MB XVII 643-647; BM XVII 594-598.
153 The Festa document is in ASC A0170604.

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270 Carlo Socol
sons of Noah – Sem, Cam and Japheth – and their descendants were thought
to have spread to neighbouring lands to repopulate the earth. Being accompa-
nied by the Angel of Cam, clearly meant that Don Bosco was being shown an
African landscape. But Arphaxad? Young cleric Festa mainly checked Rene
Francois Rohrbacher’s at times uncritical Storia Ecclesiastica154, dutifully
quoting the authors credited in the footnotes, thus giving the research a sem-
blance, at least, of a scholarly job. He “thought” he had found the key to the
mystery in Vol. 1 Book IV. Actually Rohrbacher nowhere says that “the Chi-
nese are descendants of Arphaxad”: he states that Arphaxad is the father of
the Hebrews. Other contemporary authors, in fact, were of the opinion that he
had settled in Mesopotamia, making him an ancestor of Abraham. The re-
search did not produce clear and reliable results: how Don Bosco, or his
aides, were able to conclude that Arphaxad was the Angel of China is puz-
zling. It took all the good will of Don Ceria, the author of volume XVII of the
Memorie Biografiche, to solve the riddle: since Genesis 10, 22 mentions
Arphaxad immediately after two other sons of Sem who were (supposedly)
connected with the peoples living further East, “it would not be improbable to
see that the Angel of Arphaxad stands for the Angel of China”155.
Of course there was still Don Bosco’s conviction that the name
Arphaxad had been previously unknown to him: or so he thought. Ethnolo-
gists were then postulating theories about the transmigration of peoples from
Asia to North America via the Sea of Bering, or from Africa to Brazil via the
Capo Verde Isles. Don Bosco – reports Barberis in his Cronichetta – became
interested in these topics in mid 1875, precisely when he was preparing to
send his first group of Salesians to Argentina and, at the same time thinking
about his next move to Asia. He read about new expeditions of German and
Italian explorers, about sea travel and recent discoveries. On May 12, as he
was chatting with some of the Confreres under the portico in Valdocco, he
spoke among other things about the first inhabitants of America, affirming
how it was “highly probable that the sons of Arphaxad (I think) could have
transmigrated to North America from Asia across the Straight of Bering”156.
Don Bosco knew of Arphaxad, and knew that scholars then made a link be-
tween him and the peoples of Asia. Missionaries in China were keen to match
these theories with biblical data and Chinese chronology, and more than one
of them postulated the possibility that Noah and China’s mythical first em-
154 Rene Francois ROHRBACHER, Storia Ecclesiastica dal principio del mondo sino ai
di nostri. Torino 1864. The original French was published at Nancy 1842-1849.
155 BM XVII 597-598. E. CERIA, Annali I 555.
156 Cronichetta I, p. 17in ASC A0000101.

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Don Bosco’s missionary call and China 271
peror Fu-hsi might be one and the same person157. Leaving aside these bib-
lical-ethnological assumptions, which today we regard as untenable, his biog-
rapher concludes – the origin of this information being unknown – that from
that time on
“Don Bosco fixed his attention on China, and said he believed it would not be
long before the Salesians would be summoned there. In fact, once he added,
«If I had twenty missionaries to send to China, I am sure that they would be
given a triumphant welcome, despite the persecutions». So from that time on,
he always took a keen interest in all that concerned the Celestial Empire”158.
A minor, but enlightening detail regarding this dream is Lemoyne’s
statement that Don Bosco could not correctly remember all the names of the
numerous places he had had a glimpse of: “Macao, for example, was called
«Meaco» in his narration”. While Lemoyne was intent at collecting materials
and publishing the first eight volumes of the Biographical Memoirs, the first
expedition of Salesians had already set foot in Macao, hence the observation.
It was Monsignor Vincenzo Cimatti (1879-1965), who led the first Salesian
expedition to Japan in 1926, who in 1940 pointed out that “Meaco” or more
properly “Miyako”, was the old name of Japan’s imperial city, i.e. Kyoto. But
since the dream’s description did not fit this city, one could conclude it was
Tokyo that Don Bosco saw, which is dominated by Mt. Fuji, from where one
could see China if not with physical eyes at least with prophetic eyes. Mental
gymnastics, really: Miyako always referred to Kyoto, the old capital, and
never to Edo, the new capital, today’s Tokyo159. It must be said that 18th cen-
tury maps and atlases of East Asia prominently featured the name Meaco:
Don Bosco could not have missed it. Images, data and names that surfaced in
his dreams were those he keenly explored in the books he consulted. One
157 Annali della Propagazione della Fede, Vol. VIII, Lione 1841, pp. 229-230. Fu-hsi,
2953BC, is the first of the five emperors of the legendary period. The teachings attributed
to him were hunting, fishing, the keeping of flocks and herds, cooking of food, the making
of musical instruments, etc. Samuel COULING, The Encyclopaedia Sinica. Shanghai 1917,
pp. 185, 198.
158 BM XVII, p. 598. Persecutions stirred by antiforeign feelings are recorded for the
years 1885-86 in Kiangsi Province. Fortunato MARGIOTTI, La Cina cattolica al traguardo della
maturità, in Joseph METZLER, Sacrae Congregationis de Propaganda Fide Rerum Memoria
1622-1972, Vol. III/1 1815-1972. Roma, Herder 1975, p. 528.
159 A. LENTI, I sogni di Don Bosco…, p. 114; E. CERIA, Annali I 554f. On Miyako see
two classics: Engelbert KAEMPFER, History of Japan. London 1727, which was published
in several languages (Kaempfer also produced a map known as: The land route from Osaka
to Miyako and from there to Yokkaichi) and Michael COOPER SJ (tr. & ed.), This Island of
Japon: João Rodrigues’ account of 16th-century Japan. Tokyo, Kodansha International 1973,
an edited translation of João Rodrigues SJ, Historia da Igreja do Japão, composed between
1620 and 1633.

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272 Carlo Socol
thing is certain, and this is that Don Bosco positively knew of Meaco: many
of the martyrs of Nagasaki were from Meaco and the name is mentioned sev-
eral times in the Storia Ecclesiastica160. Chances are that Don Bosco had
barely heard of or paid attention to Macao, and perhaps that even Shanghai,
which had been opened to foreign trade in 1843 and which by the late 1920’s
would become a major centre of Salesian expansion towards China’s heart-
land, had not captured his attention to the extent that Hong Kong had, chiefly
because of the 1873-1874 negotiations with Raimondi161. The Portuguese en-
clave of Macao had by then considerably lost importance, a tendency made
worse by the rise of Hong Kong, even in the ecclesiastical sphere. Peking
was, of course, the capital of the Celestial Empire and had featured promi-
nently in the Italian press, and in missionary magazines, particularly on the
occasion of its invasion by the Anglo-French army in 1860. For sometime the
Sardinian government had considered sending a battle ship to China and join
the Western powers in prying open the Far East, notably China, Japan and
Vietnam, in the belief that this would produce political and economic divi-
dends162. If Don Bosco saw all the centres where the Salesians would be
working in the future, it would not seem gratuitous to conclude that the cities
he specifically mentioned to Lemoyne were precisely the ones he was fa-
miliar with.
Less problematic, from a textual point of view, is the dream of
Barcelona-Sarriá, which Don Bosco had during the night between 9 and 10
April 1886 in the wake of the favourable developments obtained in South
America. From the top of a hill near Becchi Don Bosco saw a string of future
Salesian works in a line linking Valparaiso, through Central Africa, to Peking.
When he narrated it to several Salesians the following morning, he became
emotional, a fact recorded by Carlo Viglietti, author of the “Barcelona Diary”,
160 G. BOSCO, Storia Ecclesiastica (1871)…, pp. 358-360, OE XXIV, pp. [358-360]. The
original document containing the names of the Japanese Martyrs is in Don Giovanni Bonetti’s
handwriting, with personal corrections by Don Bosco. ASC A2350610. Giovanni Bonetti
(1838-1891), one of the founding members of the Salesian Society. Writer, first director of the
Salesian Bulletin, helped Don Bosco write some of his books. In 1886 he was elected Spiritual
Director of the Society. E. VALENTINI - A. RODINÒ (edd.), Dizionario biografico…, p. 46.
161 Macao, “city situated on China’s border”, is referred to in passing in BOSCO, Storia
Ecclesiastica (1871), p. 353, OE XXIV, p. [353]. The BM do not mention any “prophecy” of
Don Bosco regarding Shanghai. However, Don Versiglia, while announcing to Don Albera that
the Salesians had been called to take over the direction of an orphanage in that city while they
had their hands full with Shiuchow, as a form of encouragement referred to a particular saying
of Don Bosco, which he reported between quotation marks: “e Shanghai diverrà un centro di
personale”. The quotation is unique and unconfirmed. Versiglia to Albera 28.02.1920, ASC
A3510522.
162 “Museo” 42 (16 ottobre 1859) 671.

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Don Bosco’s missionary call and China 273
who immediately put it into writing. It was reproduced, marginally edited by
Lemoyne, in the Biographical Memoirs. It was received at home and abroad
in a climate of excitement and prophetic anticipation: it was “but the outline
of a grand and very lengthy vision, the story of the splendid future that God is
preparing for the Salesians”, as Viglietti put it163. Don Bosco first heard and
then saw a huge crowd of youngsters appear from nowhere, who gathered
around him saying: “We have waited for you quite a while, but here you are
finally among us, and we will not let you go!”. He was dumbfounded by the
scene, when he saw a shepherdess leading a flock of lambs, who reminded
him of his first dream, when he was nine. She proceeded together with the
youngsters to show him a landscape that extended as far as the eye could see,
with Valparaiso and Santiago at one end and Peking at the other: the field
where his sons would work, the centres where they would be formed, in-
cluding Hong Kong and many others, where “houses, studentates and novici-
ates” would be erected. The challenges were not simple: here were man-
eating “savages”, there were heretics and persecutors. The shepherdess made
two recommendations: that the Salesians keep constantly “the virtue of
Mary”, and that they be careful not to replace heavenly science with earthly
sciences.
Don Lemoyne, who later discussed the dream with Don Bosco, could
not resist inserting one addition regarding Peking which is not found in Vigli-
etti’s manuscript: “Then Don Bosco saw a large city. It was traversed by a
wide river spanned by large bridges”, which is quite surprising, because
Peking is perhaps the only metropolis in China not built on a river’s banks.
Another perplexing particular came via the same Don Lemoyne:
“Don Bosco speaking of this dream with D. Lemoyne, when he had returned
to Turin, exclaimed in a calm and penetrating tone: “When the Salesians will
be in China and will happen to be on the two banks of the river that flows
near Peking… some will walk up to the left bank of the river from the side of
the great Empire, while others will make their way down the right bank from
the side of Tartary. Oh, what a glory that will be for our Congregation when
they will meet there and shake hands! Time, however, is in the hands of
God!” 164.
With rivers in Northern China flowing eastward, Tartary is actually on
the left and the Empire on the right bank’s side. Lemoyne sent copy of the
163 Viglietti to Lemoyne, 12.04.1886 in ASC A0100205, quoted in A. LENTI, I sogni di
Don Bosco…, p. 117 and MB XVIII 72.
164 Documenti XXXI 215; MB XVIII 74. “Near Peking”: originally “nelle vicinanze di
Pechino”, is translated as “through the Peking region” in BM XVIII 52.

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274 Carlo Socol
text to Monsignor Cagliero, volunteering a personal interpretation of some
details: the presence of Don Michele Rua meant “the spiritual side” of the
Congregation and that of Brother Giuseppe Rossi represented “the material
side”; both persons appeared worried in the dream but would be reassured by
the future developments announced. Not only did the biographer not consider
the interpretation far-fetched, but added that that is precisely what oc-
curred.165 The Biographical Memoirs go on to quote letters from missionaries
in Santiago and Valparaiso received the following year 1887, describing
episodes of young children welcoming the missionaries which echoed the
joyous greeting of the children in the dream, which is really not surprising,
considering that Cagliero made copies of the text for all the houses in
America, as he had been instructed to by Lemoyne. Regarding future devel-
opments in Peking the biographer had nothing to offer, except some words of
regret and hope from Don Bosco: “I myself will not witness it. But my sons
will see what the Blessed Virgin has in store for us in China!”, words
recorded by Don Viglietti in his diary on 3rd July 1886. The echo of the last
two dreams, in fact, was discernible at Valdocco long thereafter. China was
on Don Bosco’s mind all the time, and Viglietti wrote of a coincidence he felt
was remarkable:
“Maria Ausiliatrice prepara ai salesiani le strade che essi debbono battere. Da
qualche mese D. Bosco non fa che parlare della Cina. Festa fu da lui incari-
cato di serii studii su quei luoghi… ed oggi arriva inaspettatamente una lettera
dalla China (Shanghai). Racconta che fu eretto un gran Santuario nelle vici-
nanze di Shanghai dedicato a Maria Ausiliatrice, che la accorrono in pellegri-
naggio i Chinesi… fanno la via crucis e pratiche di pietà e ottengono grazie
straordinarie… D. Bosco commosso alle lagrime dice che egli non più, ma i
suoi figli vedranno ciò che Maria ha loro preparato nella China”166.
In this fifth missionary dream, the last of his important dreams, Don
Bosco revisits Becchi and the first dream about his vocation. It is as if he
were trying to link the grand project of a worldwide apostolate he conceived
in old age to the humble apostolic aspirations of his childhood. Indeed,
having set the American enterprise on secure bases, the last years of Don
Bosco’s life, marked by evident physical decline but enlightened by mystic
and visionary inspiration, were but an uninterrupted projection of his hopes
165 MB XVIII 74.
166 Original text in ASC A0090301, which differs from the copy in ASC A0100108. Don
Bosco published news of the devotion to Mary Help of Christians at the Sheshan (Zo-sé) shrine
in his Nove giorni consacrati all’augusta Madre del Salvatore sotto il titolo di Maria Ausi-
liatrice already in 1870.

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Don Bosco’s missionary call and China 275
for the future of Salesian work. This dream, so to speak, caps his visionary
project167.
3.3. China in Don Bosco’s writings and conversations
As mentioned, what Don Bosco saw at night in these dreams was linked
to events he lived by day, or phases he was going through, of which they were
projections and elaborations. They further fuelled his imagination: for months
on end – as people around him noticed in 1886 – he kept talking endlessly
about China. It was part of his temperament: when planning the Patagonian
mission he exhibited a similar behaviour168. Likewise, certain familiar expres-
sions found on his lips, which could easily be taken as “prophecies” about de-
velopment in a particular region, be they about China or other mission lands,
when compared they appear for what they are, i.e. verbalizations of his vision
or conviction regarding the future of the Congregation: “What a wonderful
day that will be – he was heard saying – when Salesian Missionaries, moving
up the Congo River, from one mission post to another, will meet their confr-
eres coming up the Nile and join hands, praising God!” or, “What a won-
derful day that will be – Fr. Francesco Damazzo testified to having heard him
say several times – when our missionaries will go to evangelize the various
regions of America, Australia, India, Egypt, and many other lands! I see them
already penetrating Africa and Asia and entering China: we shall have a
house right in Peking!”, words which in Dalmazzo’s recollection bore witness
to Don Bosco’s faith, not his gift of prophecy169.
Of the same nature are other episodes that occurred towards the end of
his life. In October 1886, following the Barcelona dream, while in S. Benigno
Don Bosco engaged in conversation with cleric Arturo Conelli and started
talking about the China missions and the Yellow River, on whose banks Sale-
sians and Daughters of Mary Help of Christians would work one day. Conelli
felt it was no casual conversation:
“[Don Bosco] aveva lo sguardo fisso in alto e il volto ispirato. Don Conelli
sentiva di essere vicino al soprannaturale. Il Santo parlò a lungo in tono vi-
brato, ansioso, e quando tacque, parve tornare in sé da una mistica contem-
plazione. Dopo un istante di pausa domandò: – Che cosa ho detto? – Don
Conelli glielo riassunse. Ed egli: – Oh, non badare, Don Bosco fabbrica
167 A. LENTI, I sogni di Don Bosco…, p. 116.
168 Viglietti in ASC A009.0301 and Barberis in MB XII 279.
169 BM XI 384. Testifying in the process of canonization, Dalmazzo used these words to
give credit to Don Bosco’s faith. ASC A2680701.

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276 Carlo Socol
sempre al suo solito castelli in aria… Del resto, anche quando voleva andare
in Patagonia, i Cardinali dicevano che Don Bosco era pazzo. Invece si è visto.
Ma in Cina, quanto maggior bene faranno i Salesiani!”170.
The episode is not reported in the Biographical Memoirs, but is narrated
in Ceria’s Annals, probably because Ceria played a small part in it. The scene
is set again on a river bank, here for the first time identified as the Yellow
River, perhaps a logical conclusion of Ceria’s rather than Don Bosco’s identi-
fication: viewed on a map, the Yellow River flows “near Peking”! Don Bosco
appears to have been fascinated by rivers, perhaps because they are easily rec-
ognizable features on maps and atlases, which he was seen studying, intensely
absorbed171. But he never identified any Chinese river. Conelli disclosed the
contents of the conversation to the clerics, who enthusiastically gave their
names to a list of volunteers which Don Barberis drew up and presented to
Don Bosco. Among them was Ceria’s name. Top of the list was Conelli. Don
Bosco showed complacency but did not express any opinion. The episode,
however, was taken to mean that Conelli would head the first missionary ex-
pedition to China perhaps by linking this fact with what had happened to Don
Bodrato, who first heard from Don Bosco the dream on Patagonia and months
later was chosen to head the second expedition to South America. Don Bar-
beris, the likely source of the link, spread rumours that also cleric Festa, to
whom Don Bosco had entrusted some research on China, was destined for the
China missions172! None of those who were on the list, however, went to
China. Years later Ceria was to admit that Don Bosco was probably “joking”.
Not Conelli, though: he firmly believed it was a prophetic word and, back in
Foglizzo, he asked Don Bosco for instructions on how the Society should pro-
ceed in organizing the future China expedition173.
That Don Bosco in his last years envisioned Salesian expansion in Asia,
and China in particular, is confirmed by yet another episode not found in the
Biographical Memoirs but narrated by Card. Cagliero first to Don Versiglia in
late June1916, and two years later to the first batch of missionaries departing
for the Shiuchow mission. Cagliero, then Vicar Apostolic in Patagonia, had
returned in late 1887 to see Don Bosco for the last time. Only a few days ear-
lier, on January 8, Don Bosco had received the Duke of Norfolk at his bed-
170 E. CERIA, Annali III 596-597.
171 MB XI 409.
172 Cronichetta (copy) in ASC A0100108, p. 243.
173 Carlo SOCOL, The first twenty years of the Orfanato of Macao between ideal and re-
ality (1906-1926), in Francesco MOTTO (ed.), Insediamenti e iniziative salesiane dopo Don
Bosco. Saggi di storiografia. Istituto Storico Salesiano, Studi 9. Roma, LAS 1996, pp. 280-283.

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Don Bosco’s missionary call and China 277
side, and the topic of the China Missions was brought up174. On Jan 28, 1888,
three days before he passed away, Don Bosco called Cagliero near his bed
and told him: “Ti raccomando le Missioni… ti raccomando l’Asia!” (I entrust
the missions…and Asia to you!). Thinking Don Bosco was confused, he said
he worked in the West. To which don Bosco calmly replied: “I entrust Asia to
you!”175 Cagliero saw in these words a return to the old plan that Don Bosco
had in mind and that he wanted to entrust to Cagliero in 1876-1877: after
taking care of the missions in America he was to go to Asia to help set up a
new foundation there.
Don Bosco’s clear perception that his mission was destined to reach out
to the youth of the whole world, the realization that time was running out for
him, and that the mission was now in the hands of the Congregation is
nowhere better displayed than in his Memorie, the so called Spiritual Testa-
ment, which contain the famous prediction about China and Peking. To this
accounting notebook made up of 140 pages, between 1884 and 1887 Don
Bosco entrusted his final recommendations and the fulfilment of his vision,
often penned in the shaky handwriting of an old and weary man. It is ad-
dressed to his “sons”, to whom he communicates the educative-pastoral cri-
teria, the fundamental principles to which he attained himself as a zealous
priest and wise educator, expressing the desire that they keep to the same: the
exercise and style of authority, the value he assigned to persons, the idea that
professing religious life in the Salesian Congregation basically implied a fun-
damental choice in favour of poor and abandoned youth, his expectations
about fraternal life in Salesian communities, love for poverty, gratitude to-
wards benefactors, care for vocations and trust in the Virgin Mary. From 1885
onward Don Bosco was no longer concerned with the day-to-day administra-
tion of the Society, since the Holy See had appointed Don Rua as his vicar
and designated successor. As he writes all this at the end of his journey on
earth Don Bosco reveals his inner soul, the ascetics of work, the sacrifice and
suffering borne with the sole intention to win souls for God, and his constant
preoccupation for their eternal salvation176.
The very last part of the Testament, written over more than one occasion
towards the end of 1886, hence some time after the Dream of Barcelona, is
174 MB XVIII 513.
175 “Bollettino Salesiano”, giugno-luglio 1918, p. 106. Guido BOSIO, Martiri in Cina.
Torino, LDC 1977, pp. 125-126.
176 F. MOTTO, Memorie dal 1841 al 1884-5-6…, pp. 73-130. The decree appointing Don
Rua as Don Bosco’s vicar is dated 27 November 1884. Don Bosco revealed it first to the
Chapter, and then to the entire Congregation, the following September 24 and December 8 re-
spectively.

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278 Carlo Socol
entitled L’avvenire (The future) and is particularly touching. He predicts a
bright future for the Congregation on condition that “the rules are faithfully
observed”: the Congregation will come to an end when “the desire for ease
and comfort” sets in. At this point one finds two of Don Bosco’s most deeply
felt and constant reminders:
“The world will always welcome us as long as all our concern is for the
under-developed peoples [it. selvaggi], for poor children, for those members
of society most in danger. This is our real wealth which no one will envy and
no one will take from us. […]
When it happens that a Salesian yields his life whilst working for souls, you
can say that our Congregation has registered a great triumph and that on it
will descend in abundance the blessings of heaven”177.
This last sentence, rightly famous, sums up the purpose and style of
Salesian pastoral and ascetic work. Sandwiched between the two, perhaps to
underscore the charismatic quality of the message, is what many consider to
be Don Bosco’s “prophecy” about China, here given in the original Italian
and an English translation:
“A suo tempo si porteranno le nostre missioni nella Cina e precisamente a
Pechino. Ma non si dimentichi che noi andiamo pei fanciulli poveri ed abban-
donati. Là fra popoli sconosciuti ed ignoranti del vero Dio si vedranno le mar-
aviglie finora non credute, ma che Iddio potente farà palesi al mondo178.
Time will come when our missions will be established in China and precisely
in Peking. But let us never forget that we go for poor and abandoned boys.
There, among peoples unknown and ignorant of the true God, you will see
wonders formerly thought incredible, but which almighty God will make
manifest to the world”.
Whether these words are prophecy, future generations will be able to
tell. For sure they manifest Don Bosco’s inner conviction that God had en-
trusted him a worldwide mission in favour of youth and peoples in need, a
conviction that grew gradually and matured in old age, nurtured by untiring
action and trust in God, refined by intense planning and studying and stimu-
lated by vivid nocturnal dreams in which he saw the maternal care and en-
couragement of the Virgin Mary. The people, especially the young, who lived
in China were still “sconosciuti”, unknown to him. What mattered was that
they stood in need of evangelization and of help, and so they found a place in
177 Ibid., p. 127. The English translation is from the Constitutions of the Society of
St. Francis de Sales. Rome 2003, Appendix IV, From the spiritual testament of St. John Bosco,
pp. 271-272.
178 Ibid.

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Don Bosco’s missionary call and China 279
his heart just as the youngsters in Valparaiso or Turin had done. Working
among the poor, the forgotten and the abandoned, bringing them God’s love
and care, was what he had founded the Salesian Society for and for the Sale-
sian Society it was the specific way of contributing to the spreading of the
kingdom of God and the promotion of a humane and caring society. His Sale-
sians were already fruitfully carrying out evangelization and human promo-
tion at the other end of the world. He had ardently wished he could do the
same in the East, but had come to gradually accept that God had his own
timing and that this would not be achieved in his lifetime. The mission was
thus entrusted to future generations of Salesians: the day would come, if cer-
tain conditions were met.
3.4. Don Bosco 19th century vision of China
By his own admission, Don Bosco knew next to nothing about Patag-
onia before he set his mind on establishing his missions there, but once he did
so he studied the land in all its aspects with his usual, intense determination
on books then available, some of which he had requested from Argentina, and
with the help of Don Barberis produced a study which he submitted to the
Congregation of Propaganda Fide in August 1876. The knowledge he ac-
quired afforded him enough confidence to deliver a speech on Patagonia to
the Société de Géographie de Lyon in 1883, in which he chiefly illustrated the
civilizing and evangelizing action of the Salesians among the savage popula-
tions and the typically Salesian method used, a speech that included a variety
of comments on the region179. But what did Don Bosco know about China,
the other land he was heard speaking about “all the time”, especially in his
last years? When Don Bosco spoke about China, he did so mostly in general
terms: he spoke of souls and of his desire to help them, the future work and
expansion of the Congregation and the conditions to achieve that objective.
Indeed, the words that came down to us are remarkably devoid of detail about
the Country, the culture and the people.
Don Bosco’s interest in China considerably predates his interest in
Patagonia. In the Annals of the Propagation of the Faith and, later, in the
Museo delle Missioni Cattoliche, the two missionary periodicals that he read
179 G. BOSCO, La Patagonia e le terre australi…; Cronichetta, ASC A0000107, p. 56. A.
DA SILVA FERREIRA, Due sogni sulle missioni della Patagonia…, pp. 104-105. F. DESRAMAUT,
Don Bosco en son temps…, p. 1179. Don Bosco was later awarded a silver medal for the civi-
lizing effort of the Salesian missionaries, not for merits towards the Société de Géographie, as
claimed in MB XVI 69.

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280 Carlo Socol
at least occasionally, China was – unlike Patagonia – a recurrent topic: from
the two periodicals Don Bosco sourced information for some of his publica-
tions, namely the 1845 and 1871 editions of his Storia Ecclesiastica and the
Nove Giorni in honour of Mary Help of Christians180. Very early on he was
greatly impressed by the remarkable zeal and endurance of missionaries
amidst cruel persecutions there, especially exemplified by Gabriel Perboyre,
the young Lazarist missionary martyred in 1840, whose picture he reportedly
kept in his study and who featured prominently already in the first edition of
the Storia Ecclesiastica in 1845181. Indeed, what he wrote in the 1870 edition
of the same Storia about contemporary missions was exclusively about the vi-
cissitudes of China and Japan182. From the history of the missions he had
learned about the great exploits, and the failure, of 17-18th century Jesuit mis-
sionaries in China183. Don Bosco knew that the land was inhabited by a huge
pagan population of “almost 500 million souls” still awaiting the message of
salvation. He knew, probably from hearsay, that women in China bound their
feet. From reports published in missionary literature he was also aware that
pagans there resorted to the “barbarous” custom of selling or abandoning
children and of the efforts of missionaries to save them. Following categories
then prevalent in Europe, he would refer to China’s society as “barbarous”
and her inhabitants as “savages” not so much because it tolerated customs
such as this, or because of the extremely cruel punishment and death inflicted
to missionaries caught violating draconian laws forbidding their entry into the
country, but because these were expressions of her pagan and idolatrous cul-
ture, and this unavoidably placed her and her inhabitants into such cate-
gory184. In May 1875, while studying America’s native inhabitants, he got in-
terested in scientific theories and studies about the possibility of the migration
of Asiatic tribes towards the American continent via the Straight of Bering, or
towards Australia via the various archipelagos of South-East Asia. He had a
keen interest in geography, and would often study maps of the vast Country:
he knew of a river – whose name probably escaped him – that flowed “near
Peking”. This much we gather from information largely already provided.
There is more to be said.
180 Don Bosco relied on the Annals for at least one story in the 1845 Storia Ecclesiastica,
and consulted the “Museo” on China related topics when he re-edited the Storia and published
the Nove giorni in 1870.
181 G. BOSCO, Storia Ecclesiastica (1845)…, pp. 381-383, OE I, pp. [539-541].
182 Ibid. (1871), pp. 351-361, OE XXIV, pp. [351-361].
183 See MB XII 280; Documenti XVII, p. 440, in ASC A066, copied from Cronichetta,
ibid., A000108.
184 G. BOSCO, Storia Ecclesiastica (1871)…, pp. 355-356, OE XXIV, pp. [355-356].

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Don Bosco’s missionary call and China 281
Writing on 19th century missions in his Storia Ecclesiastica, Don Bosco
dwells at length on the persecution that authorities in China inflicted on the
Church, targeting both local Christians and foreign missionaries. Missionaries
who ventured into the country especially in the years between 1805, when
emperor Chia-ch’ing (1796-1820) promulgated the first of his anti-Christian
edicts, and 1844 when emperor Tao-kuang (1821-1850) granted religious tol-
erance, were aware that if caught martyrdom was a stark possibility and that
their evangelization work would consist in little more than trying to save and
baptize dying babies with the help of zealous catechists185. Don Bosco’s spe-
cial attention to the martyrial aspect of mission, as compared to the minimal
space dedicated to St. Francis Xavier, does not come as a surprise considering
the historical experience he lived through: that of the Church of European
Restoration (1815-1830/1848), dressed in martyrial purple, at first intent on
restoring co-operation between throne and altar shattered by the French Rev-
olution, then besieged by liberalism, Protestantism and other “forces of evil”;
which in turn explains the ecclesiology of a Church built on a rock and
against which the doors of hell “would not prevail”. Don Bosco shared Pius
IX’s view that the Church was marked by a fifth characteristic on top of the
traditional four: it was and had always been a persecuted Church. Divine
providence and justice, however, were at hand to make sure that persecutors
did not act beyond the time allotted them and that sooner or later they would
meet the punishment they deserved: it was the classical thesis of Lactantius
in his De mortibus persecutorum186.
As he wrote about these persecutions, Don Bosco was factually on more
solid ground, having read about them in the regular reports carried by mis-
sionary magazines, which frequently featured not only the heroic witness of
missionaries and believers, but also the diplomatic and military response of
European powers, in particular the Second Opium War (1858-1860), which,
in European eyes, pitched Western forces against those of a recalcitrant and
backward pagan Empire. China’s reluctance to abide by treaties, the clash that
brewed between a mercantile and militaristic Europe and a China wary of
opening its frontiers to a culture it despised and feared, the inconclusive ne-
gotiations, the shows of force of the British and French navies and their even-
185 The 1848 volume of the Annals quotes the following statistic: 243,696 baptisms ad-
ministered in the last four years (1836-1839), of which 186,000 were baptisms of children or
babies. Annali della Propagazione della Fede, 20 (1848) 370-371. A summary of the situation
of the Church in China during this period in F. MARGIOTTI, La Cina cattolica al traguardo
della maturità…, pp. 510-517.
186 Franco MOLINARI, La “Storia Ecclesiastica” di Don Bosco, in P. BRAIDO (ed.), Don
Bosco nella Chiesa…, pp. 203-237.

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282 Carlo Socol
tual attack brought directly against the capital city, all these were chronicled
on a weekly basis in the Museo during the years 1858-1860. Had Don Bosco
merely leafed through this and other similar periodicals he could not have
missed the drama unfolding in the East. The opening up of China and Japan
had attracted the attention of the European press and opinion. Even tiny Pied-
mont, by any account a marginal country in the political landscape of Europe,
did not want to be left out and decided to open a Consulate in Hong Kong in
1858. The royal decree, dated 8 August 1858, found a place also in the Museo
delle Missioni Cattoliche187.
These events, the only ones he did not write based on ‘dream’ or
hearsay, but on reality seen – naturally – through European eyes, eventually
found their way into the Storia Ecclesiastica. The eyes of the author were, of
course, those of a 19th century priest, hence the theological and heavily provi-
dentialistic reading he offered. Having described in some detail the harrowing
experience which martyrs Giovanni da Triora188, Charles Corney and Gabriel
Perboyre had gone through and their heroic steadfastness, he chronicled the
liberation of the Church in China in the following terms:
“Libertà cristiana nella China. – I cristiani nella China continuarono ancora
ad essere perseguitati per vari anni: ma la persecuzione non rattiepidiva per
nulla lo zelo dei missionarii, benché il recarsi colà a predicare il vangelo fosse
un esporsi al martirio. Finalmente Iddio ebbe pietà di quella misera nazione, e
dispose che la colta Europa andasse a mettere freno a tanta barbarie. L’anno
1858, dopo molte fatiche, spese e combattimenti, la Francia e l’Inghilterra
riuscirono a passare i confini del Celeste Impero, che è il nome dato all’im-
pero chinese. Questo fatto dimostra ad evidenza quanto la civiltà europea,
che è frutto del cristianesimo, sovrasti alla civiltà chinese prodotta dal gen-
tilesimo, mentre poche migliaia di Francesi ed Inglesi poterono riportare vit-
toria sopra un impero di 400 milioni d’abitanti e dettar loro la legge. La
Francia adunque e l’Inghilterra vittoriose sulla Cina conchiusero un trattato
[…]”.
At this point the Storia goes on to list the main clauses of the treaty of
Tientsin (26 June 1858), one of more than 120 treaties signed by China in
those years and by her dubbed “unequal”, because forced at gunpoint: the
opening of treaty ports, the exchange of ambassadors, the protection of the
law granted to foreigners and the freedom for the “Catholic Religion” to be
187 “Museo” 35 (1858) 547.
188 Giovanni da Triora OFM (1760-1816) was ordained a priest at 24 and in 1799, while
the French Revolution was raging and the China missions were depleted of workers, he left
for Hunan, dedicating himself to Christian renewal among Catholics. In 1815 his activity was
declared subversive and he was imprisoned with a group of his faithful. He was judicially
convicted of illegal entry and strangled on a cross. He was canonized in 2000.

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Don Bosco’s missionary call and China 283
practiced all over the Country189. Religious benefits resulted, and on these the
readers’ attention is drawn in the concluding paragraph:
“Così dopo trecento anni di persecuzione il sangue dei martiri generando nov-
elli cristiani mise termine anche in quell’immenso impero alla persecuzione
legale della Chiesa cristiana. I missionari poterono quindi uscire dai loro
nascondigli, mostrarsi pubblicamente, raccogliere i cristiani qua e là dispersi,
innalzare chiese, aprire scuole, orfanotrofi ed ospedali. In loro aiuto corsero
già e vanno correndo ogni dì altri nuovi missionari: molti vescovadi vi furono
già stabiliti, e nella stessa Pechino, capitale dell’ impero, risiede un vescovo
cattolico, il quale vi compie solennemente e pubblicamente e talora con inter-
vento delle autorità civili, le auguste cerimonie della nostra s. Religione” 190.
The ideas and sentiments expressed in these two paragraphs will un-
doubtedly surprise us today, but certainly not Don Bosco’s contemporaries.
They are not peculiar to him, but rather represent what mid-nineteenth cen-
tury people in Europe actually thought.
1. God’s providential hand. “God finally took pity on this miserable na-
tion…” and made use of the intervention by the Anglo-French armies to put
an end to the “barbarous killing” of peaceful missionaries. God always looks
upon his Church, especially when she is persecuted, and comes as helper of
believers and punisher of wrongdoers: it is a leitmotif of the Storia Ecclesias-
tica. God’s justice will not allow certain situations to persist for too long and
so He intervenes in the persecutions of the early Church, the 17th century
Japanese persecution, the fall of Napoleon, the liberation of Rome and now in
China through the valiant role of France, here seen as God’s instrument.
France’s role in the liberation of Christians in China is subtly underscored
also by Don Bosco, who lists this country’s war effort first, as behoves the
leading Catholic power of the time, even though the number of soldiers and
vessels it committed to the expedition was substantially inferior compared to
Great Britain’s. Some writers – no doubt French – went on to glorify the role
of France as a catalyst of religious peace, being the nation that had most gen-
erously contributed missionaries and paid the heaviest debt in martyrs’ blood,
a merit that Don Bosco recognized191. In the hope of seeing an end to perse-
189 G. BOSCO, Storia Ecclesiastica (1871)…, p. 356, OE XXV, p. [356]. The essence of
these clauses was published also in “Museo” 34 (1858) 570. See also Treaties, in S. COULING,
The Encyclopaedia Sinica…, pp. 569-571.
190 G. BOSCO, Storia Ecclesiastica (1871)…, p. 356. The persecution did not last 300
years, but 120 years, from Emperor Yong-cheng proscription of Christianity in 1724 to Em-
peror Tao-kuang concession of toleration in 1844.
191 Ibid., p. 354.

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284 Carlo Socol
cution, many missionaries approved of France’s diplomatic and military inter-
vention or at least saw it as inevitable, a view shared by at least one news-
paper in papal Rome192. Some even offered a mystical interpretation of the
opening of five treaty ports, comparing them to five wounds meant to punish
China by bleeding her white, but through which – like Christ’s five wounds
suffered on the cross – salvation would be delivered to her people193. Only
later the alternative view began to be aired that “the opening up of China to
European civilization and to Christianity” could not be achieved by armies
and soldiers, but only “by the zeal of Catholics, of Missionaries, and of
Friars, who bathed the Orient in their own blood and would continue to do so,
on account of persecution”:
“[…] la Cina, che volle calpestare i trattati di quattordici anni fa, verrà con-
dotta più ancora dalla mano di Dio, che dal valore europeo a segnare altri trat-
tati più liberali […] pei suoi sudditi cristiani, e per gli apostoli che a lei, per
farla veramente impero celeste, le invia la cattolica Europa”194.
Mid 19th century missionaries, who had seen their own and their flock
martyred in great numbers as a result of anti-Christian edicts in earlier
decades, lacked the mindset and the knowledge to detect in these violent ac-
tions an attempt by China’s officialdom to defend the stability of the
country’s centuries-old society and of the State, threatened by a religion that
in Confucian terms could be considered as “deviant”195. And now, these same
missionaries, who witnessed the significant change in the position of and the
opportunities available to Catholic Missions as result of direct Western inter-
vention, failed to anticipate or properly evaluate the negative effects of the
“unequal treaties”, of their own real or suspected collusion with imperialist
powers in the humiliation of China or the occupation of chunks – however
small – of Chinese territory, of the French Protectorate, of the rumours and
outrageous accusations commonly spread by and believed among the people,
of the often perfidious reaction of the gentry and local officials, and of the
legal ineffectiveness of the protection clauses. Increased xenophobia was a
constant feature of violence perpetrated against missionaries in the second
half of the 19th century196.
192 See “Roma e la Cina” in “Museo” 44 (1858) 701-702, drawn from a non-official
commentary in praise of missionary work published by Rome’s Giornale di Roma.
193 “Annali Propagazione della Fede” 21 (1849) 19-20.
194 “Esposizione” 11 (1858) 165.
195 Paul A. COHEN, China and Christianity. The missionary movement and the growth
of Chinese antiforeigninsm, 1860-1870. Cambridge, Harward University Press 1963.
196 These issues, previously discussed by selected authors, are now beginning to be de-
bated by a wider range of scholars. See Angelo S. LAZZAROTTO et al., The Boxer Movement

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Don Bosco’s missionary call and China 285
2. La colta Europa. Expressions such as “la colta Europa”, or “cultured
Europe”, and the equivalent “Catholic Europe” that Don Bosco used in the
1884 dream, were ready-made expressions. They were used in contraposition
to the “barbarous ways” of pagan China, of which the prolonged tortures of
missionaries or the exposure and sale of children were examples, repulsive to
the Christian conscience. It is but an illustration of a more generalized clash
between the two cultures.
3. Christian versus Pagan culture. The most startling passage is the
comparison at war of a society born of Christianity with one born of Pa-
ganism. The passage is not in the original draft penned by Bonetti and later
marginally corrected by Don Bosco, but was added at some later stage as a
lesson from history possibly at his suggestion197. The idea has a parallel in –
or may even have been taken from – a letter written by a missionary from
China and quoted in Museo delle Missioni Cattoliche. In it the conflict is seen
from a theological point of view not as a contention among nations, but as
one instance of a wider clash, the clash between idolatry and true religion.
Words and concepts closely resemble the ones Don Bosco expressed:
“Quivi la guerra è imminente, e dall’esito della guerra dipende in gran parte la
sorte delle nostre Missioni. Quindi io non la considero come una vertenza
[…] tra nazione e nazione, ma come un affare generale che …interessa tutto il
mondo. Vi veggo come alle prese i due imperi del bene e del male, del cris-
tianesimo e dell’idolatria, che vengono a disputarsi questa gran parte del
mondo.
Mi frutta un piacere indescrivibile il vedervi la Francia, protettrice provviden-
ziale della religione, che vi piglia parte, e, d’accordo coll’Inghilterra, tenta
aprirsi un passo in questo vasto impero, per tradurre in atto i disegni di mis-
ericordia che la Provvidenza ha tracciato per la Cina e per gli Stati vicini”198.
4. Resumption of religious activity. With the end of persecution came the
reorganization of the Church. Again, the details – “build churches, open
schools, orphanages and hospitals” – are not in Bonetti’s original, nor is the
conclusion of the paragraph regarding “the august ceremonies” presided over
by the bishop of Peking even in the presence of local civil authorities. The
building of a new society through the setting up of institutions promoted by
and Christianity in China. Taipei, Fujen University 2004. Agostino GIOVAGNOLI - Elisa GIU-
NIPERO (ed.), The Catholic Church and the Chinese World between colonialism and evangeli-
zation (1840-1911). Roma, Urbaniana University Press 2005.
197 ASC, Storia Ecclesiastica (1870), manoscritto Bonetti, A2350400, microscheda
235 C 8.
198 “Museo” 8 (1858) 119.

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286 Carlo Socol
Christian charity is a typically Bosconian concept199. Also this addition may
have been inspired by reports of the reopening of Peking churches to the cult
and the solemn ceremonies jointly conducted therein by invading corps and
formerly suppressed local Christians: “The metropolis of the Celestial Empire
is open to Catholicism. High on top of the ancient cathedral flies the flag of
our religion, the cross of Christ”, reported an editorial in the Museo200. In Don
Bosco’s mind, as in that of Catholics of his time, there could be no better
ending to the Chinese persecution than the one occasioned by God’s provi-
dential intervention through unexpected means: the locals were finally free to
practice religion, civilized society was being promoted and the Church had
triumphed.
The “religious” vision that prevailed in the Valdocco establishment as
regards political events of the type just described is evident from a rare edito-
rial dedicated to international politics, the carving up of Africa by European
Powers, published in the Bollettino Salesiano of March 1885 under the title:
Civilization and Religion. The race for the colonial conquest of Africa was
on: Britain had difficulties in containing an Islamic revolt in Sudan; the repre-
sentatives of European Powers were meeting in Berlin to try to find an accord
on Congo; all countries were preparing for military and exploratory expedi-
tions of the Black Continent ostensibly in order to put an end to slavery and
promote the advance of civilization. If there was a worthy motive to start a
war, for the editor this was it: to bring to an end the shameful exploitation of
pitiable human beings that had been going on for centuries just across the
Mediterranean. The natural law demanded it. It seemed like an endorsement
of Colonization that was picking up momentum precisely in those years,
when the evils of this movement were not yet evident. And yet, the Bollettino
was predicting disaster unless the work of civilization was accompanied by
religion, because “there cannot be true civilization without true religion; nay,
civilization and religion are synonyms”. Only religion can change people’s
hearts. For this reason a double expedition of a different kind was being
readied: missionaries were being sent out from Rome and from Turin carrying
the Gospel of Jesus Christ to China and Patagonia201.
199 P. BRAIDO, Progetto operativo…, p. 26.
200 “Museo” 1-5 (1860) 1-3; 24-28 (1861) 117; “Annali Propagazione della Fede” 34
(1862) 75-79.
201 Civiltà e religione, in “Bollettino Salesiano”, 3 (1885) 33-34. The reference is to the
11th missionary expedition from Valdocco to Patagonia and to the first expedition of the Pon-
tifical Seminary of the Holy Apostles Peter and Paul for the Foreign Missions to China in 1885
ahead of the creation of the new Vicariate Apostolic of South Henan. Gianni CRIVELLER, The
Roman Seminary in Southern China, in A. GIOVAGNOLI – E. GIUNIPERO (ed.), The Catholic
Church…, pp. 182-183.

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Don Bosco’s missionary call and China 287
Don Bosco believed in the call to spread the faith, to evangelize and civ-
ilize, to bring salvation and progress – the two being inseparable – to spread
the Kingdom and build the Church according to the blue print that was fa-
miliar to him. As a proactive member of a Church caught in a struggle with
the heirs of 18th century Enlightenment, Don Bosco did not envisage a “plu-
ralistic” world. He believed in and worked all his life with reference to a
“Christian utopia”, of which he had his own peculiar vision wherein concern
for youth was his fundamental option202. Don Bosco shared this Christian
utopia with intransigent contemporary Christians who were opposed to liber-
alism and fought for a strengthening of Christianization in Europe and the
preservation of the Church’s visible role in society. Signs of sagging began to
appear in Christian Europe as from the late 1870’s, but for these Christians
faith meant trust in God’s providence, salvation and ultimate victory. The
Church would weather the storm relying on traditional supernatural values.
Don Bosco was, after all, a genuine 19th century believer who thought and ex-
pressed himself as one of them on a whole range of topics, including foreign
missions, the Christian utopia they wanted to create abroad. What a history
manual writes of 19th Century Christians in general, suitably applies to Don
Bosco as well:
“Christians [then] were concerned for the eternal salvation of all «those
seated in the darkness of the shadow of death». The same spirit inspired the
missionaries who travelled through France and those who undertook to take
the gospel to the «savages» […]. Some people wanted to found new Chris-
tianities freed from the obstacles which had been encountered in Europe. […]
The utopian socialists also wanted to establish their socialist ideals beyond
the seas.
At the same time Christians […] were concerned to put right many tragic
human situations. Evangelization was always accompanied by an attempt to
civilize and introduce humanity. The missionaries were teachers, doctors,
nurses, sometime scholars […]. In a perspective centred on Europe, Chris-
tians, as Europeans, were hit by the slow progress of civilization in certain
countries. In the nineteenth century, all Europeans thought that the world was
moving towards a universal civilization. Christianity would, of course, be the
religion of this civilization”203.
One would look in vain for a mention of the concept of “inculturation”
in Don Bosco: this perspective is absent in his vision204. It could not have
been otherwise. From the point of view of meeting of cultures, the 19th cen-
202 P. BRAIDO, Progetto operativo…, 18ff.
203 Jean COMBY, How to read Church History, II. London, SCM Press 1989, pp. 170-171.
204 P. BRAIDO, Progetto operativo…, p. 25.

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288 Carlo Socol
tury missions had been organized in a far less judicious way than in the pre-
vious centuries, when Matteo Ricci (1552-1610) spearheaded the method of
adaptation. Don Bosco, who knew about the Jesuit missions in China, briefly
mentions Francis Xavier in the Storia Ecclesiastica but not Ricci. The great
Italian missionary’s example was lost on the 19th century Church, which
showed little interest in understanding China: Ricci’s manuscripts, and with
them his famed method, would be rediscovered by chance in 1909205. The
Christian model proposed by 19th century missionaries remained the one they
had known in Europe in local missions, of which foreign missions were a nat-
ural extension:
“The salvation offered by the missionary was not located solely in the other
world. It began in this world, since faith transformed customs, and Chris-
tianity brought the only true happiness. Charitable action stemmed from be-
lief in the incarnation and devotion to Christ, God and humankind: Chris-
tianity freed people overseas from misfortune. […] By proclaiming the gospel
the missionary was civilizing the savage and making him abandon his bar-
barous customs; in the face of the pretensions of the Enlightenment which had
thrown Europe into revolutionary chaos, only Christianity could be the basis
for a universal civilization. This theme recurred constantly in statements by
bishops” 206.
Writing for the young Don Bosco saw “Christian utopia”, the vision-
mission he and his age shared, as already being fulfilled, virtually at least. In
the closing pages of his Storia Ecclesiastica, after the announcement of the
forced interruption of the Vatican Council on 8 December 1870, he extended
an invitation to his young readers to join in prayer, that God in his infinite
mercy grant the Church peace and freedom. He noted that the Catholic reli-
gion was making great strides all over the world: believers were growing con-
stantly – “by the day” – in America, Japan and even in the “Celestial Em-
pire”, notwithstanding occasional persecutions caused by abusive civil ad-
ministrators. As for the rest, “bishoprics were being established, churches
built, seminaries and Christian schools opened”. What were still needed were
“missionaries in greater numbers than ever to cultivate the vineyard of the
Lord and to lessen the darkness in which people by the thousands were still
immersed”207.
205 Practically no publication on Matteo Ricci went to press during the 19th century. After
the 1909 casual discovery of Ricci’s manuscripts in the Historical Archives of the Society of
Jesus by Fr. Pietro Tacchi Venturi SJ, Ricci’s Opere Storiche were published between 1911 and
1913 by the same Tacchi Venturi and a National Tribute Committee, in 2 volumes: I Commen-
tarj della Cina, and Le lettere dalla Cina, 1580-1610.
206 J. COMBY, How to understand the History…, p. 119.
207 G. BOSCO, Storia Ecclesiastica (1871)…, pp. 367-368, OE XXIV, pp. [367-368].

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Don Bosco’s missionary call and China 289
It had been his dream to send his Salesians to China and bring the
Gospel message to the numerous people and the youth in need there. He felt
he had a contribution to make. In his analysis of the failure of the Jesuit mis-
sion, whose many achievements he praised, he dared to express the opinion –
for that is what it amounted to – that they would have fared better, had they
tried also to gain the support of popular masses by providing education to
young people in need.208 In the late afternoon of 20th May 1875, while chat-
ting with his trusted Don Barberis, Don Bosco expressed some interesting
ideas, prompted by the presence of a globe that his interlocutor, a teacher of
geography, had placed on the library table. Speaking of missions and mission-
aries, and of the many millions of men and women still awaiting the good
news, the conversation fell on Asia:
“Asia – he observed – is inhabited by some 800 million people, very few of
whom are Catholic. China (the Chinese Empire) alone has almost 500 million
souls, and India almost 200 million. – Oh! How many souls, and how many
missionaries would be needed. We think we here in Europe are already some-
thing. Think that the population of the Chinese Empire alone exceeds that of
Europe by one and a half time! We are used to speak about Piedmont, to study
or narrate her history and observe her progress and regress, and Piedmont is
but a little grain in the midst of a lake? And what about this atom, our Oratory
here in Valdocco? – Don Bosco resumed with a smile – and yet it keeps us
very busy and from this little corner we plan to send people here and there,
etc.” 209.
4. Epilogue and conclusions
Don Bosco died on 31st January 1888. During his last days on earth, the
missions of Asia were very much in his thoughts as an unfulfilled dream that
God, however, would certainly accomplish in due time. The Salesian commu-
nity was quite aware of his concerns in this respect: for the two following
decades the Patagonia and China missions would top the Superiors’
agenda210. Barely two years after Don Bosco’s death Don Arturo Conelli
(1864-1924), then a young priest, started setting in motion a process of
208 Documenti XVII p. 440, in ASC A066; MB XII 280. Original source: Cronichetta,
12.08.1876, ASC A0000108.
209 Cronichetta, ASC A0000101, p. 21.
210 Cogliolo to Barberis, 16.07.1910, in ASC B913. Pietro Cogliolo (1866-1932) played
an essential role in arranging the first expedition to China. As Provincial of Portugal he visited
Macao in early 1910. After the Portuguese revolution he worked in S. Africa and in his last
years was at the service of the Holy See in Central America.

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290 Carlo Socol
lengthy negotiations that would see the Salesians landing in Macao in 1906.
The dreams, the words and especially the Spiritual Testament of Don Bosco
would provide a strong, charismatic stimulus within the Congregation to see
his “prophecies” come true. Each stage in the development of Salesian work
in China – Shiuchow (1918), Shanghai (1924), Hong Kong (1927), and espe-
cially Peking (1946) – would be seen as a new dawn of the “time of wonders
that Mary Help of Christians would work in China”211. Superiors and mis-
sionaries, with rare exceptions, were united in this conviction.
By contrast, it is the prevalent opinion nowadays that much of what Don
Bosco foresaw about China has yet to come212. Dreams and “prophecies” are
periodically revisited, especially in this jubilee year when the Salesians cele-
brate the 100th Anniversary of their presence in China (1906-2006)213. Fol-
lowing Don Bosco’s repeated cautionary advice, in 1876 and 1885, present
and past historians warn that great prudence is required when dealing with
this phenomenon of “prophetic” dreams, whose reality and importance in the
life of Don Bosco one cannot deny but whose nature and full implications
elude us214. Don Bosco himself did not have an easy task in interpreting his
dreams. It took him 4-5 years to find a key to the interpretation of the dream
of 1871-1872. Evidence in hand, we have been able to conclude that even his
interpretations were unavoidably incomplete and occasionally incorrect. Over
time his attitude towards his dreams changed, in both directions: from enthu-
siastic to cautious evaluation and from prudent stance to deep conviction. He
learned to temper his enthusiasm on discovering that his early appraisal did
not match reality in Patagonia. Made wiser by experience, he drew far more
generalized interpretations from his dreams on China and suggested an open-
ended timeframe for their fulfilment.
That Don Bosco experienced this kind of difficulty should not come as a
surprise, as Don Alberto Caviglia remarked very early on:
“To Don Bosco dreams hinted at things in the future, as already finished […].
But they never explained how to reach those objectives, nor where and when
211 Versiglia to Albera, 28.02.1920, in ASC A3510522. Other sample references:
Fochesato to Rinaldi 24.12.1923 ASC F156; Caravario to his mother 20.10.1925 published in
Callisto CARAVARIO, Mia carissima mamma. Cinque anni di corrispondenza del giovane Sale-
siano martire in Cina (ottobre 1924 - febbraio 1930), a cura di Francesco Motto. Roma, LAS
2000, pp. 21, 74; Benato, letter of 27.10.1946 reported in Verbali delle riunioni capitolari, vol.
VII, p. 604, in ASC D875.
212 Egidio VIGANÒ, Da Pechino verso l’88, in ACS 323 (1987) 8-10. A. LENTI, I sogni di
Don Bosco…, pp. 121-122.
213 Carlo SOCOL – Domingos LEONG, The dream continues…: Centenary of the Salesians
of Don Bosco in China. Hong Kong 2006.
214 P. STELLA, presentazione to C. ROMERO, I sogni di Don Bosco…, pp. 5-6.

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Don Bosco’s missionary call and China 291
he would have found the means, nor in what way he would overcome the ob-
stacles. He knew he would get there, and perhaps he only knew that either he
or his sons would get there. The rest, and this was neither trifling nor simple,
he had to manage by himself, and, from what we know, without specific or
concrete awareness he was carrying out what the dream had shown him”215.
At the same time one should be ready to admit, as others have done be-
fore, that Don Bosco could be reserving some surprises. What Cagliero heard
from Don Bosco in 1888 on his death bed – the recommendation to “take care
of Asia” – was not inserted in the diary of Don Bosco’s final illness “uniquely
because at that time it appeared unlikely. But after 30 years it has become a
reality”. Don Ceria, after having offered his interpretation of the missionary
dreams and especially that of 1886, accepting as good Cimatti’s suggestion
that Don Bosco had in fact seen Japan and not Macao, concludes: “Let us
leave to the Salesians who will live 150-200 years from 1885, as the dream
says, the pleasant task of witnessing the complete fulfilment of what was
shown in the four missionary dreams. There are too many instances in which
Don Bosco’s predictions have come true for us to doubt those that have
not”216. And so when revisiting the missionary dreams a blend of expectation,
reverence and critical realism would not be out of place. Historians readily
admit that certain aspects of the complex phenomenon elude their research
and remain out of their reach, and that in certain cases there are just not
enough reliable elements to formulate a fair judgment. An overall assessment
is a long way off.
That said, and in the meantime, some conclusions may be drawn:
Sources. Others have written on the topic that the present study is in-
tended to shed light on, viz. C. Kirschner and M. Rassiga217. Their basic ap-
proach was that of stringing together documents and information retrieved
from the Biographical Memoirs and other printed sources without even a
minimum of critical attitude. Problems related to this methodology, particu-
larly the use of the Biographical Memoirs as an unquestionable source, raised
a long time ago and recently highlighted by F. Motto, did not seem to touch
them218. In contrast this study has attempted to revisit traditional sources, to
215 A. CAVIGLIA, Don Bosco.Profilo storico…, p. 73.
216 E. CERIA, Annali I 559.
217 Carlos A. KIRSCHNER, Dom Bosco e a China: contributo para a História dos Sale-
sianos. Macau 1970, pp. 7-85; Mario RASSIGA, Breve cenno storico sull’Opera Salesiana in
Cina. I. Hong Kong 1973, pp. 1-10.
218 Francesco MOTTO, A proposito di alcune recenti pubblicazioni, in RSS 47 (2006)
291-300.

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292 Carlo Socol
consult as far as possible the originals, subject them to critical scrutiny, albeit
provisional and incomplete, and set them in their context. A wealth of unpub-
lished or hitherto overlooked material was also used.
Results. Even this partial critical approach to the dreams and the words
attributed to Don Bosco, as well as the use of additional sources, have forced
us to re-write certain episodes and certain assessments of traditional histori-
ography: “Bellia’s testimony about Don Bosco’s early desire to send clerics
and priests to work in Patagonia, or Lemoyne’s proffered reason for the
breaking up of negotiations with T. Raimondi to send Salesians to Hong
Kong are the clearest examples. The step by step reconstruction of these ne-
gotiations, right at the time when Don Bosco was preparing to set his Society
on an overseas expansion, reveals some of the undercurrents of his deter-
mined struggle to have the Salesian Constitutions approved and puts into per-
spective the swift decision to opt for a first foray in Argentina, the first
thought of which we set around the first decade of June 1874, to be followed
shortly thereafter by expansion in Asia. The second part of the plan, as we
know, did not work out, and only his dreams and long term vision have come
down to us. Similarly, the problematic surrounding the nature, textual gen-
esis, versio recepta and interpretation of dreams and related sayings of Don
Bosco was highlighted by even the most benevolent critical approach, a fact
that reinforces the calls for the dismantling, or at least the reassessment, of a
prevailing, overdone spiritual bias. Words that were univocally interpreted as
pertaining to the supernatural sphere have been seen as what they most likely
are, i.e. compliments or stereotypes. Subjecting circumstantial evidence to
critical verification and evaluation has yielded new data about, and brought
new insights into, Don Bosco’s missionary call, understanding, planning and
initiatives, his vision and knowledge of China, his mind frame, the cultural
richness and limits he shared with the 19th century European ecclesial estab-
lishment.
As a consequence, the person at the centre of our investigation stands out
before our eyes in a more credible mixture of light and shade, a Don Bosco
who grows and matures according to the laws of gradualism; who struggles to
identify the path he has set out on; who has to learn to temper the enthusiasm
of his visionary character; who certainly is not the only recipient of the abun-
dant charisms that God distributes for the furthering of the Kingdom; whose
intuitions are in certain respects ahead of others, but at other times not so for-
ward looking as those of other contemporary men of God. On the one side we
have the face of Don Bosco we are familiar with: the priest, the shepherd, the
father and teacher, his spiritual dimension, his thirst for souls, a life constantly

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Don Bosco’s missionary call and China 293
inspired by God, his awareness of the needs of the times, his total, dynamic,
creative and flexible dedication to youth, his untiring and daring action, his
capacity to dream and to let himself be driven by ideals while always re-
maining extremely practical and down to earth… On the other, more human
side, the study has revealed or confirmed some of his less familiar traits and
characteristics, which he shared with the people of his time, including the
cultural limits and blind spots typical of 19th century culture.
Ordinary and extraordinary. For obvious reasons this study has not
touched on the “extraordinary” in the life of Don Bosco. Important as this as-
pect may be, his portrait would not be a faithful one without the more ordi-
nary aspects of his daily life, those that – incidentally – bring him closer to us.
God, who endowed him with many gifts, did not spare him the toil of strug-
gling, of searching, of discerning, of growing and of committing mistakes219.
Words and facts. What Don Bosco said, or wrote or dreamt about China
is populated with lots of …words. He did not personally accomplish anything
concrete and had to limit himself to foreseeing future development, which
would be achieved under certain conditions and at an undetermined time. And
yet his words and dreams spoke with the strength of fact, because they repre-
sented what he believed in most and lived daily and constantly. Underlying
the dreams there is a certainty regarding their content and meaning born not
of theophany, but of his radical trust in Divine Providence, his faithful and
constant attention to God’s call and the opportunities that presented them-
selves. Factual also is the constant daring with which he undertook his many
and challenging enterprises, starting from his concern for poor and abandoned
youth – even those in mission lands – the homeless, the orphaned, the outcast,
those in danger or in need of evangelization.
Don Bosco and China. Don Bosco’s interest in China was born of his
human growth, faith experience and charismatic call, the three unified by
one common denominator: his desire and resolve to do his utmost for the
“salvation of souls”, especially of poor and abandoned children and peoples
in need of evangelization, wherever they might be. In his formative years and
early priesthood it grew out of his ecclesial sensitivity; in full “programmatic
stage”, the mid 70’s, it became a determined search for a concrete commit-
ment by his Society; in later years, from 1883 onwards, it grew as a desire
tempered by realism and anxiety and became a vision and ideal interspersed
219 Francesco MOTTO, Introduzione to Giovanni BOSCO, Epistolario II (1864-1868).
Roma, LAS 1996, p. 9.

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294 Carlo Socol
with warnings addressed to present and future generations, but always
forward looking, always projected towards the future, to attain universal
expansion220.
Don Bosco’s dreams and words about China have to be seen within this
concept of the universalism of the Salesian mission. They are clearly the re-
sult of his burning desire to bring salvation to youth in need, wherever they
are to be found, and hence they are a reflection and an expression of God’s
will, that “not one of the little ones be lost” (Mt. 18,14). Seen from Valdocco
China represents one extreme end of the earth. Don Bosco envisaged this uni-
versal mission of bringing God’s love to youth the world over: Peking as Val-
paraiso and Valdocco! Did Don Bosco have any preference for China, seeing
how much he thought and how often he spoke about it? Any such preference
could only be understood within his preferential choice for the young and
people in need: young and “savages” are most in need, and populous, isolated
China had particularly many of both.
It was Don Bosco’s inner conviction that the Salesian Congregation
would definitely be one day at work in China, on condition that it remain
faithful to its charism: his dreams and words are to be seen above all as
a powerful call to faithfulness. The Congregation shall see the marvels
promised. How and when, no one can tell, but for him they will certainly be
“meraviglie mai credute”, i.e.“incredible things”.
220 “The thought of an imminent end was […] occupying his mind so much that he
drafted a circular letter on the 18th [February 1884] which his successor was to send to the
Salesian cooperators in the event of his death. He then told Fr. […] Lemoyne, “I can see before
me the progress that our Congregation will make in the future. From South America, it will
spread to the North, and then it will extend to Austria, Hungary and Russia, then to India,
Ceylon, and China. Within a space of a hundred years from now, what a wonderful develop-
ment we would be able to see for the Salesian if we were still alive! […] Yet only two or three
bad Salesians would be enough to lead astray all the others. If we remain faithful to the ordi-
nary Christian virtues, what a magnificent future God has in store for us”. BM XVII 15.