How Don Bosco became involved in the missions
How does one explain how two missionary
congregations founded in 1859 and 1872 explicitly to
help young people at risk would be listed, a few
decades later, amongst the most important missionary
congregations in the Catholic Church? Did this all
happen by chance or by some internal logic amongst
factors that seem to have no link? “Beginning of a
new story”, says Fr Ceria. Who knows if he shouldn't
really have said: “Beginning of the real story of Don
Telling us how Don Bosco, the evening of 29th
Bosco”?
January 1875, solemnly announced his decision to
send a first group of missionaries to the Americas,
historian Eugene Ceria, writes:
For sure, to judge Don Bosco and his founding
charism, we need to think about his entire life and
effort. Don Bosco is a rather special founder. We
“surprise, amazement, enthusiasm followed for
his listeners, who at the end broke into rapturous
applause. In order to measure the impression on
the listeners, we need to go back to that time,
whent he Oratory was not, as it is today, an
international setting, and the Congregation still
had that sense of being a family gathered simply
around its Head. The reign given to imagination
that evening suddenly led to limitless horizons,
and instantaneously captured the grand notion
that Don Bosco and his Work encompassed. One
could truly say that for the Oratory and the
Salesian Society a new moment in history had
begun” (Annals of the Salesian Society I, 249).
should not confine him to that period of youthful
foundation at Valdocco, as interesting and typical as
that may be. He was a founder urged on by pastoral
zeal and imagination, and never stopped founding
new realities: in 1875, he sent out his first
missionaries, but he also founded the Mary Help of
Christians activity for adult vocations; in 1876, he set
up the Salesian Cooperators; in 1877 he launched the
Salesian Bulletin...so then, seen in all its entirety,
what does the launching of Salesian missionary work
mean? As part of the wealth of the Salesian charism,
what does the missionary element mean? Let us
suppose that Don Bosco had died at sixty rather than
at seventy three, at the beginning of 1875, before
being able to organise his first missionary expedition:
We today, who have known [more than] a century of what consequences would there have been then for
this missionary tale and are living in truly
the Salesian project? We can say: of course there
international settings, experience little surprise or would have been the Salesian Family, and it would
enthusiasm. So I ask myself if we should not still be have grown... but there would not have been that
amazed, even more than they were a century ago, broad, lively Family that we now know.
because we are now in a position to visualise that
huge tree which grew out of that little seed planted in
1875. How can we explain how this young priest,
thirty years of age, with a crowd of adolescents in
train in the outskirts of Turin could have become,
when he was sixty the founder of churches
established by his sons way over there in America?
I would like to try to show how missionary
involvement, a constitutive element of our charism,
represents the ultimate development of this charism,
its fullness, and this is particularly why I have placed
it in the broad context, highlighting its basic
directions, which help us to trace out the face of the
true Salesian.
(J. Aubry, Rinnovare la Nostra Vita Salesiana, 47-49)
A Missionary Speaks to Us
«...Don Bosco founded the Oratory and the Congregation... his principal motive was the salvation of the
young, so all his effort and work was to save souls. ... If we want to be sons of Don Bosco, we need to
seek every means possible to save souls. We too in the mission in Siu Chow, want to bring Christ to every
soul around us. It is important to be in contact with the people through all kinds of works, to have schools
which are well regarded by the people and the government. In 1950 in China lthe schools were full of
children ... We carried out a real catechesis in Chinese, lI used the catechism written by D. Zuggo. The
youngsters came of their own volition... we had many catechumens ...Each Salesian had his group of
catechumens...there was a real flowering of things. ... I still teach catechism today to catechumens... if I
were not catechising I would die!»
(Fr. Gaetano Nicosia, 92, missionary in China)
