To the President of the Argentine Republic, Julio Argentino Roca

E VIII, 3909

Request for financial assistance for the shipping costs of the missionary expedition to Argentina

Turin, 31 October 1883

Your Excellency Mr President of the Argentine Republic,

The Pampas and Patagonian deserts, which have already cost Your Excellency so much effort and sweat, and which you were pleased to recommend several times to the Salesian Missionaries for evangelisation, seem to be on the verge of taking a regular direction both in terms of civilisation and religion.

For four years now our religious, led by Your Excellency, have been making their first efforts in those vast regions, and they have now been able to establish themselves in several colonies on the Rio Negro, making apostolic excursions as far as the Rio Chubut and Lake Nahuel Huapi, not far from the Cordilleras. They have already succeeded in founding churches, schools, nurseries, and charitable hospices for young people of both sexes.

However, the ever-increasing number of people coming to the faith forced Father James Costamagna to come to Europe in search of workers to spread the Gospel. He was able to prepare twenty missionaries and ten sisters who will leave for Argentina on 12 November.

I am doing everything in my power to ensure that they leave equipped with the necessary clothing, church furnishings, and also the most important tools of their trades; but I would need Your Excellency to kindly assist us in paying for their passage on the ship belonging to the maritime transport company.

The active role taken in civilising those savages and the great sacrifices made by the Argentine Government for the social good of the State, and specifically in favour of the Salesian institutions, schools and orphanages, give me hope that you will come to our aid.

My confidence grows even more in these days when the Holy Father has decided to establish the Ecclesiastical Hierarchy in those vast districts, as I have already had the honour of informing Your Excellency in his name, and as the Holy See will shortly make official.

May the Lord God bless you and the entire Argentine Republic, and may peace, prosperity and heavenly blessings descend abundantly upon your states and upon all the inhabitants of these regions whom divine Providence has entrusted to your diligent care.

I would like to thank you for all the good you have done and continue to do for our religious community. With deep gratitude, I consider it the highest honour to be able to profess myself

Your Excellency’s

most obliged servant

Fr John Bosco