DIREZIONE GENERALE OPERE DON BOSCO

Via della Pisana 1111 - 00163 Rome

The Rector Major

Conferment of honorary citizenship of Turin City,

Turin, 18 December 2009

'THANK YOU' ADDRESS

Your Excellency Mr Mayor

President of the City Council

Councillors,

In the first instance I would like to thank you, in my own name but also that of the Salesian Congregation, for bestowing honorary citizenship on me just a few moments ago. I am very well aware that it is a gesture of recognition for Don Bosco, whose unworthy ninth successor I am, and for the Salesian Congregation which began here 150 years ago, and which has become one of the most widespread apostolic, spiritual families in the world.

I would like to add that precisely because of its presence in more than 130 countries around the world, Turin, Valdocco, and other places too in Piedmont, are known and loved everywhere. Don Bosco is a precious gift which Italy, and in more concrete terms, Piedmont, has given to the youth of the world. And we have become “ambassadors” of Turin.

Don Bosco and the city of Turin

It is well known how Don Bosco showed respect towards civil authorities. Without ever getting lost in a servile attitude, he demonstrated a sincere esteem and trust, and did not lack either in asking comprehension regarding his work, and any help that might be offered.

It is good to recall that the relationship between the Salesian Family and the Turin City Council begins with the opening of Don Bosco's work. The oldest letter which our founder sent to the mayor of Turin, then called the city Vicar, is from 13 March 1846. In it Don Bosco describes the beginnings of his Oratory and sums things up for the Mayor of the time, Michael Benso di Cavour, thus: “the aim of this catechising is to gather boys on feast days who, having been left entirely to themselves, are not involved in any church. Teaching is restricted entirely to this: 1^st. A love for work, 2^nd Frequenting the Sacraments, 3^rd Respect for all authority”.

Don Bosco immediately set up a strict relationship with city authorities, asking for help, but letting them know about his activities and inviting the successive Mayors to Valdocco to see the “early foundations” of the growing Oratory.

In 1851 Don Bosco came to the balcony of the City Hall, along with the vice Mayor, to pull out the winners of the first great lottery he had launched to support the Oratory.

The relationship did not diminish in difficult moments for the citizens of Turin, like during the cholera epidemic in 1854. In fact to the contrary! Don Bosco made his boys available to take care of the sick and took in young lads orphaned by the epidemic, for which the Mayor thanked him in words of esteem and admiration.

And let's not think that all the mayors who followed belonged to clerical political parties - not at all!. It was only gradually that Don Bosco and then the Salesians became part of the DNA of the city, profoundly Turinese, gradually maturing a lasting and heartfelt collaboration between both sides of the “free Church in a free State” which was fostered by the Italian Risorgimento.

This relationship continued solidly with Don Bosco's successors; one need only cite the funeral commemoration that the City Council wanted for Don Rua, Don Bosco's first successor, on the day of his death, 6 April 1910. The Mayor of the time, Senator Rossi, introduced himself to the City Council on that occasion in the following words: “Allow me to make an exception to the Rules which prevent any interruption to proceedings during the approval of the City budget, but this morning someone has died who incarnates not just humanity, but a grand notion, indeed a grand mission: the education of the people”.

A changing city but a lasting relationship

The focus of this relationship has always been to walk with the city through its constant changes. Don Bosco writes in his Memoirs of the Oratory, written between 1873 and 1876: “taking part in the early Sunday catechism lessons from 1842 to 1845 were young lads from various places: Savoiards, those from the Val d'Osta, Bielle, Novara, Lombardy; mostly 'foreign' youngsters, spending only a part of the year in Turin; stone-cutters, brick-layers, plasterers, pavers, fitters, and others coming from distant parts”.

Always accustomed to thinking in educational terms and therefore according to criteria of change and development, the Salesians have made their presence in the Turin area a sure point in their program of work, changing it and trimming it according to the needs of the citizens, while at the same time staying faithful to their own objectives and calling.

Right now in the area covered by Turin City there are ten Salesian religious communities, sharing the work along with many adult lay persons, of seven oratories, two kindergartens, one primary school, four lower secondary schools, four upper secondary schools and technical institutes, three professional formation centres, two universities and four university colleges, with a daily total of students that goes beyond ten thousand.

All of these have always had, amongst other things, two precise features: in the first place their openness to the local area and to forming educational networks, firstly with public bodies, but also with other educational organisations, and then the desire to contribute, thanks to the Salesian style, to the formation of people who dedicate their lives, in a professional and ongoing way, to the “res publica”, in political and administrative roles for the good of all Turinese society.

This has given rise, and I refer here just to recent years, to projects which have come about and been developed together with the various Council Departments of the Turin City Council. To cite just a limited list: the Day Centres network; the project which has lasted for many years called, “Young for the young” which aims at educational work on the street; day reception centres and reception communities for young migrants who have been left to themselves; solid accompaniment, other forms entrusted to volunteers and young people; more than twenty years of experience in collaborating in projects for estate ragazzi (summer programs); managing with the City Council the new “Condominio solidale” (a form of joint management). At the same time, people have come from Don Bosco's courtyards who have given and still dedicate their lives to council institutions and forming others to a sensitivity for the common good, which then becomes a personal commitment and an ability to manage the 'res publica'.

This privileged relationship has often been confirmed by the City of Turin, in first place personally by Mayor Chiamparino, including through his familiar, competent and ready presence at many of our feasts and shows, including more recently at a formation gathering for young Turinese on active citizenship, indicating the need for institutions and the Congregation to join forces in order to get young people to dream, invite them, and make the consequences of the “good Christian education” they have received in Don Bosco's home more effective.

Absolutely relevant, even if hard to quantify due to their widespread distribution throughout Turin's area, are the number of past pupils, friends of Don Bosco, adults and families, who by coming into contact with the Salesian Congregation have brought Don Bosco's style then to their own work and their own way of being citizens: sharing responsibility in a Christian way with others for the good of all, serving all citizens, in a special way, within and beyond Salesian works, being faithful to Don Bosco's mandate, that is by acting, as he himself wrote, to “to gather up those youngsters most at risk and by preference those who have just come out of prison”, at the same time developing a privileged attention for the young who “are far from their families, strangers in Turin” with the intention of “lessening the number of unruly youngsters and potential prisoners”.

Today, as then, the Salesian Congregation in this city aims to continue to be responsible for young people at risk who pass through the oratories and attend professional formation courses and it does so with particular attention to second generation foreigners, at the same time not overlooking the many 'normal' youngsters in formative, pastoral and recreational activities encountered in the daily round of pastoral and educational activity.

Because there are foreign children with no adult accompaniment who 'live in' in many of our oratories, almost a basic community which does not mean a low level educational content, we aim to look after youngsters in difficulty, children of immigrants, who are pretty solidly represented in Turin today, as we know. We know well how this City through its public, religious and private institutions has built up a protective network for them, one which we like to call, along with Don Bosco, a preventive network.

The Salesian Congregation in Turin is part of this and will continue to be so because "It is enough for you to be young for me to love you", as Don Bosco used say, and also because it seems good to me to recall that it is “a Turin system” integrating and networking with public, religious and private institutions which other cities are envious of.

We are aware of the difficulties these youngsters encounter during the difficult phase of integration, holding their very different cultures together somehow, given that they do not need to be torn from the culture they come from, but also needing the culture of this City which has always taken responsibility for welcoming and integrating migrant movements. Perhaps its because the 'Social Saints' in the 19th Century still continue their protection today, and because the introverted and bashful nature of the “bôgianen” of the Turinese [tr note: "Noi autri i bogioma nen" or 'W'ere not moving', a comment under siege by the Count of San Sebastiano 200 years ago, expresses the pride of being Turinese] is free of showy ostentation, and full of common sense.

There are youngsters, nevertheless, who unless (Don Bosco's prevention) arrives early, someone else thinks of drawing them into circuits of well being which, we know, may also be circuits of physical and moral ruin. Helping them to construct an identity made up of the integration of values of different cultures, is not only a survival strategy which allows the adolescent to keep his or her ethnic tradition but is something which at the same time establishes contact with the culture that has welcomed them in. It is our way of “taking care of them”.

All this, I am convinced, follows the line of “giving more to those who have less”¹. In other words, it seems to us a priority to better understand the typical features of those who are the preferential beneficiaries of the Salesian mission: “young people who are poor, neglected and at risk”. It is a predilection which presupposes a “universal love”, marked by certain features; excluding nobody, but not privileging everybody. Ours is a gospel predilection with a praxis that “gives the most to whoever in his or her life has received the least”.

Our educational praxis needs to be renewed because of the changes in new young people we are sent to, in other words, it must continue to have the savour of the extraordinary which becomes the ordinary, one tinted with a daily sense, anchored in the social and local context where each work, expresses its social activity in the daily round of encounters, presence, attention.

To conclude, I am convinced that the mark of our being with young people in difficulties, will be that of guaranteeing them the chance of an education. An education which translates into “helping each one to become fully a person through growth in conscience, development of intelligence, understanding of his or her own destiny”.²

For these new arrivals too, the Saint of Turin would say today: "In matters of advantage to young people at risk or which serve to win souls for God, I go ahead even to the point of being rash" (MB XIV, 662.). Perhaps rashness is to be slowed down at times, but we remain convinced that "Education is a thing of the heart, and God alone is master of the heart and we cannot succeed unless God teaches us the art and gives us the key".³

As Salesians we have learned all this, but it can never be done alone, always in dialogue with those who share the mission to make young people “good Christians and upright citizens”. With all this on the 150th anniversary of the founding of the Congregation it is good to recall here, in the Turin City Council, that the Congregation considers the city to be the cradle in which it was all born.

Turin, 18 December 2009

Fr Pascual Chávez V., SDB

Rector Major