• MAMMA
• MARGARET

• DON BOSCO’S MOTHER

• BOSCO FAMILY ALBUM

• It was in this house, in the little hamlet of the Becchi that I, John Bosco, learned to be a human being. It was here that my mother taught me the basics.

• I lost my father, Francis, when I was two and my mother, Margaret, was left alone to look after 3 children (me, Joseph and Anthony) and our grandmother.

• Our mother’s greatest concern was to instruct her children in the faith, to make them obedient and to keep them occupied with things suitable to their age.

• - Look at that storm! How powerful God is! Never offend Him through sin and He will look after us in everything.

• - How beautiful these flowers are! If God thinks about them how much more will He be thinking about us?

• - Look how many stars there are! God created them for us!
• How he loves us!

• My mother taught us to see God in the poor.
• - Mamma, can I take this bread to Madalena? She is poorer than we are!

• Going into the village we would find worse situations:
• - Come, John! Pray to God that we don’t become like they are!

• Returning home I would say to her:
• - Mamma, how I would like to be a priest to help so many young people! So they would not fall into bad habits...

• Mamma Margaret taught me to be loyal and brave. But one day I played up…
• - Get up there and bring it to me! Go on...

• Oh! Even with a large pot of oil!..
• All attempts to clean up the oil stain were useless...

• My mother will be so upset! She has so many financial problems and look what I’ve done now!
• So I took a stick and began to get it ready...

• ... I went to meet her as she was returning from the market.
• Mamma, this is for you to use on me!
• And I told her truthfully what had happened. She forgave me...

• I was a good leader and organised games amongst my friends and learnt circus tricks, but I often came home with cuts on my head!

• And my mother:
• - How come? Every day something like this happens! From now on you have stop mixing with those friends!

• - Mamma. Let me keep playing! When I am with them they are much better and they don’t use bad language! And my mother would then always let me go...

• I understood that it was not enough just to keep my friends amused: But I should make my activities part of the parish, to grow more and learn...

• And so, moved by a desire to learn,I decided to take part in a mission that was taking place in the nearby parish church.

• On one occasion I met up with Fr. Calosso who, seeing my ability to recall the sermons, wanted to speak with my mother.

• Margaret, your son has a prodigious memory! He should be studying! Send him over to my place and I will begin to give him some special classes.

• My older brother Anthony, from my father’s first marriage, put plenty of obstacles in my way:
• - Hmph! Look how strong and healthy I am and I never read a book!

• Overcome with anger I answered:
• - Don’t be so sure! Our donkey is bigger than you and it never went to school!

• Only my fast legs saved me from a belting that day...
• My mother was very worried about the situation and I was crying...

• Fr. Calosso invited me to stay with him. That only lasted a short time because he died suddenly. I had to return home

• One day a worse thing happened:
• - Either this ‘little lord’ gives up his books or I’m leaving!

• My mother tried to reason with him but to no avail.
• I’ll do John’s work!
• Anthony wouldn’t agree

• Then my mother advised me to look for somewhere to go.
• - We must have courage! God’s providence will look after us!

• Leaving home was very difficult.
• - Good luck, John! Be good and always keep your devotion to our Blessed Mother! Trust in Her!

• I was taken into the Moglia farm where I received some small reward for the work I did

• When it came midday and the Angelus bell rang I always knelt down and recited the Angelus’.

• One day my uncle came to me suggesting I return and start my studies again Imagine how happy I was at this suggestion to return home and be with my mother again!

• To study, I had to walk 16 kms each day on foot! Often when it was raining, snowing or windy…

• Go to sleep, John, it’s late! If you keep going like that you will fall ill!
• Just a little longer, Mamma! I need to finish this book!

• Just as well I eventually found a family to put me up. When my mother came to pay the owner of the house something for my board he wouldn’t accept it because of my good behaviour..

• The next year I continued my studies in Chieri with the idea of entering the seminary. Providence looked after our house by bringing many donations...

• I left my family the second time. To support myself I had to learn several trades...

• Many friends used come to me. I started up a group with them called the ‘Cheerful Society’, with the aim of keeping us together as good friends.

• - John, follow your vocation! But remember that if you ever become a rich priest, I will never come and visit you!

• After many difficulties and much study, I was ordained priest at 26 years of age. It was like a day in Paradise for my mother to receive Jesus from her son’s own hands!

• At night, after the festivities, my mother took me aside and said:
• - Remember, John, that to begin to say mass is to begin to suffer!

• When I began my priestly ministry I saw that dream I had when I was 9.: ‘Here is your field, this is where you must work!’ It was just a case of waiting for the right moment to arrive..

• It was on 8th December that same year that I met the first poor and abandoned young man in the sacristy of a Church in Turin: Bartholomew Garelli. I began an Oratory!

• The Oratory became ‘a house that welcomes, a parish that evangelises, a school to prepare for life and a courtyard to meet friends and enjoy oneself’.

• Exhausted by all my work amongst the young, I had to return home to recover, with my mother. ‘Take your mother back with you’ the parish priest told me. And my mother took up the offer.

• Here is your new home!
• That was the beginning of ten years my mother worked with me and for the young people at the Oratory.

• ‘It was quite clear that she didn't restrict herself to being just the cook and washing lady: The young people had complete trust in her, the affection of those who felt they were loved’ (Fr. Pascual Chávez)

• Many of the youngsters had nowhere to live or families to look after them. So I began to accept them into the Oratory.

• At the beginning, the first boys ran off with the bedclothes and anything else they could take.

• Several times I tried taking in youngsters like this and always with the same result!
• Together with my mother, we didn’t know what to do...

• Until the moment which was blessed by God arrived. After getting a snack ready for a boy who had nowhere to go….

• - Tonight he will sleep here. Don’t do what all the others have done and take everything! Tomorrow God will provide….... And before he went to sleep we prayed together.

• So the Oratory had begun by taking in (successfully) its first poor and abandoned youth : We started out with 15 in 1849, and it became 100 in1854.

• One day Mamma Margaret’s patience had just about run out. Her little garden, looked after with so much love and effort, was completely destroyed!

• - I can’t keep going any longer! Every day those kids get up to something different... Let me return home. Let me return to my own little property and live out my days in peace there!

• Shaken by this I looked at my mother. Then my eyes went to the Crucifix.. Mamma understood:
• - You are right! You are right!

• ‘From that moment not a single word of complaint ever escaped from her lips’.
• (Biographical Memoirs)

• My mother’s life would become one with mine and with the very foundation of Salesian work itself

• How often, to make sure what I had written would be understood by people, I read it to my mother before getting it printed!

• My mother’s advice would help me and even protect me from attack by my ‘enemies’.
• She would alert me, but...

• ... One day my stubbornness came up against a grey dog which blocked the doorway and wouldn’t let me leave home!
• A little later I found out that someone was conspiring to do me in...

• Then my mother became fond of the dog...
• This kind of thing happened often and nobody knew where this ‘angel’ came from.

• One of the really nice traditions my mother had was to cook chestnuts in Autumn and distribute them to the boys.

• One day her calculations were out: When I started giving them out I saw there were not enough for everyone. What could I do? I carried on calmly and nobody missed out...

• Every year we went for a long walk on foot with the youngsters, to my home: It was a real feast for us and for the villages we would visit.

• It was on one of these visits that a 12 year old presented himself, Dominic by name, a boy of rare intelligence and deep spirituality.

• What do you want to do with your life?
• If God gives me the grace I would like to be a priest.
• I will be the cloth and the Lord will be the tailor.

• One year there was a terrible plague of cholera, and many died. All the young people in the Oratory made themselves available to visit the sick.

• Mamma got sheets ready, bed clothes and even the altar cloths that had been made from clothes she had back home.

• ‘Such a motherly and feminine presence is a unique fact in the history of founders and teaching Congregations’
• (Fr. Pascual Chávez)

• We can say that ‘the Salesian Congregation was cradled on Mamma Margaret’s knees’
• (Teresio Bosco)

• - God knows how much I loved you, but I will love you even more in eternity I have done everything I could... Tell the boys I worked for them like a mother.. (Biographical Memoirs)

• Mamma Margaret lived poor and died poor: She went to a common grave without her name inscribed on it, but her name was written on each one of us!

• ‘Recalling the 150 years from Mamma Margaret’s death, mother of the educative family created by Don Bosco in Valdocco, I thought of inviting the Salesian Family to renew its commitment by paying special attention to the family, cradle of life and love and the place where we first learn to be human’
• (Fr. Pascual Chávez, Strrenna 2006)

• Drawings: G. Grilli (Turin 1961)
• Arranged: Fr. Luiz De Liberali (Recife 2006)

• Bibliography:
• -Bosco J., Memories of the Oratory of St. Francis de Sales
• -Chávez P., Strenna 2006.
• -Bosco T., Don Bosco, (English translation 2006)
• -Setti G., Don Bosco: piccolo saltimbanco, Turin 1961
• Setti G., Don Bosco: l’amico dei giovani, Turin 1961
• Setti G., Don Bosco: l’apostolo della buona stampa, Turin 1961