austraLasia #1755

Saints aren't angels - US author launches novel based on Don Bosco

NEW YORK: 9th February 2007 -- Richard A. Benack, a professional author currently writing fiction, but also a practising lawyer with military experience and who worked in the advertising world as well, was born and raised in Queens County, New York City, and attended Don Bosco Preparatory High School in Ramsey, NJ where he discovered Salesian brothers and priests and their founder, Saint John Bosco. He came to appreciate unique problems teachers of boys faced and grew his interest to learn more about the founder of their order, reading widely about him over the years. At age 38 and as father of three active boys the author began to accumulate information on Saint John Bosco and started to write his thoughts about that man. That drive, begun almost 40 years ago, culminates in the dramatic biography Saints Aren’t Angels.
    In 1971, Benack moved the family to the village of Garden City in Nassau County, New York. There local political and community involvement by the author led to his election as school board trustee and subsequently as mayor of his village. That experience provides groundwork for the political and administrative problems and solutions faced by the Vicar of Turin, Count Michele Benso di Cavour. The author served Mass as a youth, did so through high school and even now in his senior years assists priests at Masses when no other altar server is on hand. He still quotes Latin responses he learned as a youth.
    Author Benack’s familiarity with matters of priesthood and its administration and challenges comes from family experiences. He has two brothers and a cousin-in-law who are or have been Roman Catholic diocesan priests, as was Saint John Bosco, the novel’s protagonist.
    In recent years, Benack has published short stories. Saints Aren’t Angels is his first novel.
    Further information about this novel and its availability and about the author himself is available from http://www.donbosco-salesian.com/
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