Letter to King Victor Emmanuel II

Don Bosco

To King Victor Emmanuel II

[Turin, 14 November 1849]

Your Royal Majesty,

Fr John Bosco, who lives in this Capital, humbly describes for Your Majesty how he wanted to provide for the needs of the most abandoned youngsters, and so began to gather them on Sundays and Holy Days in one or other place around the city, always with the consent of the ecclesiastical and civil authorities. The Lord blessed this work and now it has been established at Valdocco between Porta Palazzo and Porta Susa as an Oratory under the title of St Francis de Sales. More than five hundred boys flock there, a large number of them having been released from prison or who are in danger of ending up there. The place indicated above then became too small for the great number who wanted to come, so in 1847 another Oratory, under the title of St Aloysius, was opened at Porta Nuova between the viale de' Platani and R. Valentino.

Given that in present times abandoned youth find themselves in greater need of both education and religion, the Vanchiglia Oratory run by Fr Cocchi, assistant priest at the church of the Annunciation which was closed for a year, has now been reopened under the title of the Guardian Angel.

In all three places using sermons, catechism lessons and school, we constantly nurture love for work, respect for authority and law according to the principles of our Holy Catholic Religion.

There are also Sunday schools for teaching the metric system, for those who can come. We also have a home with twenty five beds to provide for the most urgently in need of these boys. The usual number who attend these Oratories together amounts to around a thousand, for Sundays and Holy Days.

Up until now everything has gone ahead with the help of some charitable individuals and with the help of a good number of zealous priests and also lay people.

Now the supplicant, finding himself in charge of the three Oratories, is in difficulty, given that between the three places the rent costs two thousand four hundred francs, including expenses for maintaining the three chapels respectively, where we have all the sacred functions every Sunday and Holy Day, and then there is the difficulty of the other daily expenses, the result of the extreme poverty of some of the children, and despite all the efforts the supplicant has made he now finds himself in the tough position of not being able to continue.

He therefore begs Your Royal Majesty to give kind consideration to a work that has already provided and we hope will continue to provide for the well being of so many abandoned individuals. It is a work that already received charity from Your august father. The supplicant beseeches You to grant the charitable aid that Your father would look kindly upon.

I have the honour of remaining, Sir, Your Majesty's most humble and obedient subject,

Supplicant,

[Fr John Bosco]