austraLasia 1664

Confreres lining up for the Salesianity Seminar, Thailand!
(and others can read the course materials online)

BANGKOK: 15th October 2006 -- The East Asia-Oceania Salesianity Seminar is due to be held at Sampran, Thailand (not so very far from Bangkok) from 2-6 January 2007. The day prior to the commencement of the seminar will be a day for Salesianity teachers from around the region. As notification has already gone out to Provincials, it is expected that enrolment in the seminar will be occurring over these days and weeks.  Participation is open to Salesians and memebrs of the Salesian Family.
    The Seminar has a descriptive title indicating its clear thrust: To know Don Bosco through the Memoirs of the Oratory and the Biographies of the three young people (Savio, Besucco, Magone). The venue will be the FMA Retreat House at Sampran.
    Guiding the process will be the current 'big name' scholar in Salesianity from the UPS, Fr Aldo Giraudo.  Although Fr Giraudo will be speaking in Italian, great care has been taken to ensure that all course materials are available in English and that the proceedings are also conducted with translation on hand.  There will be both lectures and workshops involved.
    The two main course materials on which the seminar will be based are, naturally, the Memoirs of the Oratory and the three biographies of Don Bosco: Savio, Besucco and Magone.  This material is available in English from the Bosconet website at www.bosconet.aust.com.  For the moment both can be accessed from the home page. But both are also available from the 'Useful Texts' page which can be accessed from the home page.  For the moment, look under the 'what's new this week' rubric on the home page for the three biographies (a zip file).
    This latter collection (the three lives) was translated many years ago by Fr Cornell from the Australian province.  It was published by Salesiana Publishers in Manila then went out of print.  Fr Cornell was not working from the last editions which Don Bosco published (DB altered details over as many as five editions). Fr Cornell had also added comments of his own since he had wanted these biographies to be used in a particular way.  The version on Bosconet has a translation substantially that of Fr Cornell's, but adjusted to come into line with the last printed editions we have of Don Bosco's, minus any additional notes and with the inclusion of Don Bosco's own footnotes (at times amounting to almost another book!).  Hence you have here a most valuable resource.  The zip file contains these texts in three formats - rtf (openable in Word but also other text programs), html (web version) and xml (a storage format which guarantees that these texts may be converted into very many formats including voice if needs be).
    During the seminar, Bosconet will also offer a section within Boscowiki which could enable people who are both participants and non-participatns to be involved.
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