APPENDICES

APPENDIX 1

Message of His Holiness JOHN PAUL II

for the beginning of the GC25

Dear Sons of Don Bosco!

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1. With great affection I address myself to you gathered together from the five continents to celebrate the 25^th General Chapter of your Congregation. It is the first of the third millennium and gives you the opportunity to reflect on the challenges of educating and evangelizing young people, challenges to which the Salesians wish to respond following in the footsteps of their Founder Saint John Bosco. It is my hope that the Chapter may be for you a time of communion and fruitful work, during which you can share the zeal which unites you in your mission among boys and also your love for the Church and the desire to open yourselves to new apostolic frontiers.

My thoughts at this moment go spontaneously to the late Rector Major, Fr Juan Vecchi, recently deceased after a long illness, offered to God for the whole Congregation and especially for this Chapter Assembly. While I thank the Lord for the service he rendered to your religious Family and to the Church, and for the witness of evangelical fidelity that always distinguished him, I offer a special prayer for the repose of his soul. It is for you now to continue the work that he so successfully undertook following the example of his predecessors.

Diligent educators and skilled spiritual guides as you are, you will know how to meet with young people who long to “see Jesus”. You will know how to lead them with gentle firmness along the demanding paths of Christian fidelity. “Duc in altum!“ May this also be the watchword of your Congregation, which in this Chapter Assembly is encouraging all its members to a courageous relaunching of their own evangelizing activity.

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2. You have chosen as the topic of the Chapter “The Salesian community today”. You know very well that you have to refashion methods and ways of working so that your “Salesian” identity may clearly emerge in the changed circumstances of society, which require, among other things, the opening up to lay collaborators with whom to share the spirit and the charism left as a legacy by Don Bosco. The experience of recent years has highlighted the great opportunities there are in such collaboration which will enable the members and groups within your Salesian Family to grow in communion and to develop a common apostolic and missionary dynamism. In order to open yourselves to cooperation with lay people it is important for you that you clearly determine the special identity of your communities; that they may be, as Don Bosco wished, communities gathered around the Eucharist and animated by a profound love for Mary Most Holy, ready to work together, sharing a single educative and pastoral project. Communities capable of animating and co-involving others, especially by their example.

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3. In this way Don Bosco continues to be present among you. He lives on through your fidelity to the spiritual heritage that he left you. He gave to his works a special style of holiness. And it is especially holiness that the world needs today! Most fittingly, therefore, the General Chapter will propose once again with courage as the principal response to the challenges of the contemporary world “tending towards holiness”. In short, it is a matter not so much of taking up new activities and initiatives as of living and bearing witness to the Gospel without any compromises, so as to encourage towards holiness those young people that you meet. Salesians for the third millennium! May you be enthusiastic teachers and guides, saints and formers of saints, as was Don Bosco.

Strive to be educators of youth in holiness, making use of that typical pedagogical approach of the joyful and serene holiness that is your hallmark. Be welcoming and fatherly, ready at every opportunity, in every situation to ask young people through your way of living: “Do you want to become a saint?” And do not hesitate to propose to them the “highest level” of the Christian life, accompanying them on the road of a deep attachment to Christ, who in the sermon on the mount declared: “You, therefore, must be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect. (Mt 5, 48)

Yours is a history filled with saints, many of them young people. On the “Hill of the beatitudes of the young” as these days you call Colle Don Bosco where the saint was born, in the course of my visit on the 3^rd of September 1988, I had the joy of beatifying Laura Vicuna, the young salesian girl from Chile that you know well. Other Salesians are on the way towards that goal: these are the two confreres, Artemide Zatti and Luigi Variara, and the Daughter of Mary Help of Christians, Sister Maria Romero. In Artemide Zatti one sees the value and the topicality of the role of the Salesian Brother; and in Don Variara, priest and Founder, one sees a further expression of your missionary charism.

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4. To this by no means small band of Saints and Blesseds you too are called to unite yourselves, committed to following in the footsteps of Christ, source of holiness for every believer. Do so in such a way that your whole Congregation may shine out for holiness and brotherly communion.

At the beginning of this millennium, the great challenge facing the Church, as I recalled in the apostolic Letter Novo millennio ineunte is “to make the Church the home and the school of communion” (n. 43). For the apostolate to bear good fruit it is essential that the communities live in a spirit of real mutual brotherhood. To carry forward a single educative and pastoral project it is necessary that all the communities be joined together by a strong family spirit. May each community really be a school of faith and of prayer open to young people where it is possible to share their hopes and difficulties, and to respond to the challenges that as adolescents and young people they have to face.

But where is the secret of that union of hearts and of apostolic action to be found if not in fidelity to the charism? Therefore always keep your eyes fixed on Don Bosco. He lived his life entirely in God and recommended the unity of the communities around the Eucharist. Only from the tabernacle can that spirit of communion which becomes the source of hope and of commitment pour forth for every believer.

May affection for your Father continue to inspire and sustain you. His teaching invites you to mutual confidence, to daily forgiveness, to fraternal correction, to the joy of sharing. This is the path that he followed, and the one on which you too can draw the lay faithful, especially young people, to share the gospel and vocational project that unites you.

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5. As you can see, the reference to young people also keeps coming back in this Message. This link between Salesians and young people is no surprise. One could say that young people and the Salesians walk along together. Your life, in fact my dear sons, is lived out among the boys as Don Bosco wanted it to be. You are happy among them and they enjoy your friendly presence. Yours are “houses” in which they feel at ease. Isn’t this the distinguishing feature of your apostolate in every part of the world? Continue to open your places especially to poor boys, so that they feel “at home” there, enjoying the fruits of your hard work, your love and the witness of your poverty. Accompany them as they enter the world of work, of culture, of social communication, promoting a climate of Christian optimism within the context of a clear and strong appreciation of moral values. Help them to be in their turn apostles of their friends and those of their own age.

This demanding pastoral activity puts you in touch with the many factors at work in the field of the education of the new generations. Be ready to offer your support generously at various levels cooperating with those who are fashioning educational policies in the countries where you are to be found. Defend and promote human and gospel values: from respect for the individual to love for one’s neighbour, especially for the poor and the marginalized. Work so that the multicultural and multireligious society of today may move towards an integration that is ever more harmonious and peaceful.

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6. My dear Sons of Don Bosco, to you is entrusted the task of being educators and evangelizers of the young people of the third millennium called to be sentinels of the future as I told them at Tor Vergata, on the occasion of the World Day of Youth in the year 2000. Walk together with them, stand beside them with your experience and your personal and community witness. May the Holy Virgin, whom you invoke with the beautiful title of Mary Help of Christians accompany you.

Following Don Bosco, always put your trust in her, and spread devotion to her among all you meet. With her help so much can be done; rather as Don Bosco loved to repeat, in your Congregation it is she who has done everything.

The Pope tells you of his pleasure in your apostolic and educational commitment, and he prays for you, so that you may continue to walk in total fidelity to the Church and in close collaboration among yourselves. May Don Bosco and the host of the Salesian Saints and Blesseds accompany you.

I endorse these wishes with a special Apostolic Blessing, which I send to you, Members of the General Chapter, to the Confreres spread around the world and to the whole Salesian Family.

From the Vatican, 22 February 2002, Feast of the Chair of St Peter.

Joannes Paulus II

APPENDIX 2