DIREZIONE GENERALE OPERE DON BOSCO
Via della Pisana 1111 00163 Roma
The Rector Major
Letter of the Rector Major, Fr. Ángel Fernández Artime, on the Servant of God, Salesian
priest Joseph Augustus Arribat, being declared Venerable
Dear confreres,
On July 8, 2014, Pope Francis authorized the Congregation for the Causes of Saints to
promulgate the Decree concerning the heroic virtues of the Servant of God, Joseph Augustus
Arribat, a priest and professed member of the Salesian Society of St. John Bosco.
This step in our confrere’s journey towards beatification and canonization is a great
gift to our Congregation and the whole Salesian Family in this third year of preparation for the
bicentenary of Don Bosco’s birth and in light of the path embarked upon by the 27th General
Chapter. It is good for us to contemplate this figure of a Salesian priest, who was a true
disciple of Don Bosco and whose heart radiated priestly piety, sweetness, selflessness and
peace, and whose face always bore a constant, humble and welcoming smile. Here was a true
“mystic in the Spirit”, whose presence, not his words, revealed that he was entirely in God and
for God; a “prophet of fraternity,” who shunned “gossip” and made charity his way of life; and
a “servant of the young”, who was resolute in serving them and not being served, was always
present in their midst and ready to perform the most menial services. He was a good-natured
person, a happy religious, an experienced Salesian, a well-liked confessor and a wise spiritual
guide.
Joseph Augustus Arribat was born on December 17, 1879 at Trédou (Rouergue -
France). The family’s poverty forced young Augustus to start middle school at the Salesian
Oratory in Marseilles only at the age of 18. Because of the political situation at the beginning
of the century, he began his Salesian life in Italy and received the cassock from the hands of
Blessed Michael Rua. On returning to France he, like all his confreres, engaged in semi-
clandestine Salesian activity, first in Marseilles, and then at La Navarre. He was ordained a
priest in 1912. Drafted into the army during the First World War, he served as an ambulance
stretcher-bearer. After the war, he continued to work intensely at La Navarre until 1926,
when he went to Nice where he stayed until 1931. He then returned to La Navarre as Rector
and at the same time assumed charge of the parish of St. Isidore in the Sauvebonne valley. His
parishioners would later call him “the saint of the valley”. At the end of the third year, he was
sent to Morges in the Vaud canton of Switzerland. Thereafter he served three consecutive
terms of six years each as Rector of Millau, Villemur, and Thonon in the diocese of Annecy. The
period most fraught with danger but also laden with graces was probably his tenure at
Villemur during the Second World War. In 1953 he returned to La Navarre and remained
there until his death on March 19, 1963.
