Greeting of the Superior General of the FMAs

to the Salesians gathered for General Chapter 28

Turin, 22 February 2020

Sr Yvonne Reungoat fma

With all my heart, also on behalf of the General Council and of all the Daughters of Mary Help of Christians, I thank you for the invitation I received to participate in the solemn opening of your GC 28.

I greet the Salesian Bishops and Cardinals, all the authorities and representatives of other groups of the Salesian Family present here. With particular affection and gratitude, I greet the Rector Major, Fr Ángel Fernández Artime, the centre of unity of this great Family, who in these six years has accompanied its growth and development with the love of a father.

I greet the members of the General Council and all the Salesians participating in the 28th General Chapter of the Congregation.

The theme of the Chapter: "What kind of Salesians for the youth of today?", is in continuity with the journey begun in GC 26 which proposed for reflection the Da mihi animas cetera tolle of don Bosco and in GC 27 on the theme Witnesses to evangelical radicality. Work and temperance. Don Bosco's educational and missionary passion was the inspiration and impulse for the renewal of the way of life and for the charismatic vitality of your communities all over the world.

Now the Chapter Assembly is called to draw up the profile of the Salesian, according to Don Bosco's heart, for the Third Millennium, in fidelity to God's plan, which leads us to continue to be apostles of the world of youth, and in fidelity to the challenges of the time in which we are living, to the new educational needs of adolescents and young people in the five Continents.

The theme finds a clear and exhaustive development in the Letter of convocation of the Rector Major (24 May 2018) and, subsequently, in the Working Document addressed to all Salesians. The Letter of convocation, in the richness of its articulations, has also been the object of reflection on our part. Many of the statements resonate in the whole Salesian Family and are accompanying us in the preparation of our GC XXIV, for the common attention to the contemporaneity where the Lord is speaking to us, calling and sending us in his name to bring the joy of the Gospel and the beauty of the Salesian charism.

The question that guides you "What kind of Salesians for the youth of today?" ouches the root of vocational identity. It is like asking: "What and how would Don Bosco do today? Hence the pastoral effectiveness and vocational fruitfulness of your mission. Only authentic and saintly Salesians will know how to speak effectively to these young people about Jesus, to help them to become "good Christians and honest citizens", as Don Bosco wanted and as the Strenna of the Rector Major reminds us this year.

Pope Francis calls us in this year 2020, with all the other people in the world who are interested in the world of youth, to a Renewed Global Educational Pact. It is an appeal that certainly finds you particularly sensitive, as is the whole great Salesian Family. Don Bosco would have rejoiced and, from Paradise, greatly rejoices.

The two Synods of Bishops on the family, the Synod on young people and the special Synod on the Amazon, have given us a glimpse of new paths, have raised questions, have opened up "outgoing" choices unseen in the past. They are appeals to a particularly attentive commitment for you and your GC 28. They await openings of horizons in tune with the Salesian charism so that it may respond to the need for education and evangelization that runs through the world of youth today.

Being the expression of a missionary outgoing Church is inherent in our charism. Pope Francis, who knows the Salesian world well, in the preface of Don Antonio Carriero's book "Evangelii Gaudium with Don Bosco", wrote that Don Bosco entered "the social and existential peripheries!" that grew in 19th-century Turin, the capital of Italy and an industrial city. There he brought the loving and wise care of the true educator to all the boys he snatched from the streets. They found in Valdocco an oasis of self-respect and the place where they learned to be good Christians and upright citizens, indicating this attention of his as a sign of his holiness.

It seems to me that the Pope has already given an answer to the question of your GC 28: the Salesian is "a concrete man, like your founder... who knows how to look around, sees critical situations and problems, faces them, analyses them and makes courageous decisions. He is called to meet all the peripheries of the world and of history, the peripheries of work and family, of culture and economy, which need to be healed".

Our two General Chapters are held almost on the eve of some significant celebrations: the 150th anniversary of the first missionary expedition of the Salesians; the 150th anniversary of the foundation of the Institute of the FMAs; the centenary of the deaths of Fr Paolo Albera and Mother Caterina Daghero.

These are precious opportunities to revive today the apostolic and missionary passion that nourished the beginnings of the Salesian Family and that we try to keep alive today. The new generations, in fact, continue to need educators who are entirely devoted to their good and therefore ready to face every disturbance, to do every effort to achieve the goal of integral education that culminates in holiness.

In your GC 28, as in our GC XXIV, Mary Help of Christians is present and it could not be otherwise: the letter of convocation, dated 24th May from Turin, ends with the prayer for the GC which is addressed to Mary Help of Christians. The Chapter itself takes place in the shadow of the Basilica built by Don Bosco to sing the glories of Mary.

May she, the Mother of the whole Salesian Family, tell you our thanks, dear Salesian Brothers, for the service of spiritual and sacramental animation that you guarantee in our communities, to the sisters and young people, to the laity who share our same mission. Young people need the family spirit that unites us to feel accompanied on their journey in search of the meaning of life, for the growth of their faith, to be sustained in hope.

I renew my thanks to the Rector Major who has been to us Father and Brother during these six years and who has enriched the whole Salesian Family with his magisterium and with his enthusiasm for the Salesian vocation. I thank him for so many gestures of fraternity and I assure him of my personal prayer, and of the prayer of the General Council and of all the FMAs.

We are sure that we and the entire Salesian Family will benefit from your GC 28: it is a blessing for all the Salesians who are enthusiastic and capable of responding to God's plan, open to building together, in a great synergy, a future wide open on the great horizons of the mission. On all of you, Members of the Chapter present here, I invoke the blessing of God and of Mary Help of Christians.

Thanking you for listening and wishing you have a good journey in this Chapter!