DIREZIONE GENERALE OPERE DON BOSCO

Via della Pisana 1111 - 00163 Roma

The Rector Major

CONCLUDING ADDRESS OF THE RECTOR MAJOR

FOR “PREVENTIVE SYSTEM AND HUMAN RIGHTS” CONGRESS

Dear brothers and sisters

I would like to conclude this Congress on the “Preventive System and Human Rights”, which has brought us together from 2- 6 January 2009, with a word of thanks, in the first place to all of you for responding to my invitation, taking part in the entire program, and for seeing that it has been so successful.

Bringing about an event of this magnitude is no small thing; it has occurred in the Christmas season where we celebrate the birth of Jesus, the birth of a new humanity in Christ, the new Adam, model and goal of every human being. The mystery of the Incarnation in fact enlightens our understanding of human dignity and motivates our commitment on behalf of human rights.

It is no small thing either that this Congress opened the beginning of this jubilee year when we celebrate the 150th anniversary of the Foundation of the Salesian Congregation. A celebration of the kind must stimulate a renewed fidelity to Don Bosco and the young, with the same enthusiasm and conviction of that first group of Salesians who, on 18th December 1859, began the Congregation. They gathered in Don Bosco's room

“in one and the same spirit with the sole purpose of preserving and promoting the spirit of true charity needed for the work of the Oratories on behalf of neglected young people at risk. For in these disastrous times of ours such young people are liable to be corrupted and plunged into godlessness and irreligion to the detriment of the whole of society. The Gathered group then decided to form a society or congregation with the aim of promoting the glory of God and the salvation of souls, especially of those most in need of instruction and education..." .¹

We live in different times today and the circumstances in which we are living out our Salesian vocation have also changed; this requires our constant reflection and a response which is adequate to the new challenges we face. The Salesian mission though has not changed nor have its purpose, those to whom we are sent, the criteria for our activity, all of which Don Bosco left us as a precious inheritance.

And it is precisely in this combination of circumstances that we have chosen to reflect on the “Preventive Sytem and Human Rights”, with a view to offering human rights, especially where children are concerned, the rich contribution that comes from the motivations, reflections and experiences which are part of the Preventive System and which at the same time open this Preventive Sytem up to this relatively recent way of promoting the human being and his or her growth. I would now like to offer some pointers for continuing along this path; some strategic choices for the future.

1. The Salesian charism and our responsibility for human rights

In this hall, with people of many ethnic origins, cultures, languages, we all see ourselves as part of the unique charism of Don Bosco and we are renewing his missionary dreams which saw the presence and effort of his sons and daughters on behalf of young people throughout the world.

This is the marvellous inheritance which the Salesian Family has within its grasp: 15 million boys and girls in 130 countries around the world. Perhaps like no other educational agency - the special representative from the United Nations speaking on the right to education told us - we have a unique geographical and cultural representation, one which fosters, in a determining way, the education of young generations around the world. We acknowledge this with humility, but also with awareness.

We are talking of an inestimable patrimony which leads to accepting a huge responsibility, that of contributing, giving inspiring through the Gospel of Jesus and the charism of Don Bosco, fostering the transformation of society, removing the deep causes of injustice, poverty, exclusion, enabling the growth of the human being in all his or her dignity, evangelising the young, especially the poorest amongst them.

The Congregation has no reason for existing other than the salvation of the young in all the meanings of the word salvation. Like Don Bosco in his time, we cannot be bystanders; we must be active agents of their salvation. The Letter from Rome in 1884 also asks us today to put the “child at the centre” as a daily effort in what we do and as an ongoing choice in the life of every one of our communities. This is why, for the complete salvation of the young, the Gospel and our charism today ask us to set out on this path of human rights; meaning a new path and new languages which we cannot ignore. We must leave nothing untried for the salvation of the young; it should not be possible for us today to look into the eyes of a child without seeing ourselves as promoters of that child's human rights.

2. The centrality of the quality of education

Only education can promote a new world, where every human being, each man, woman and child can live a free and dignified life in peace; at the same time education is the most radical means for removing the causes which obstruct such promotion.

Faced with the “educational emergency” marked out by such polarities and ambivalence, faced with an education that is often considered in terms of “market logic”, faced with an education which serves to maintain the status quo which in turn privatises wealth and socialises all kinds of poverty, as a Salesian Congregation with the young, with lay people and families, we are called to:

• scrutinise the quality of our educative and pastoral offering, its capacity to bring young people to mature appreciation of universal values: respect, fostering of the dignity of the human being, personal and social responsibility for justice and solidarity, active citizenship;

• scrutinise the capacity of our educative and pastoral offering to communicate the Gospel and bring young people to an encounter with Jesus, including through an education which frees them from all forms of poverty and marginalisation;

• scrutinise our capacity to give full expression, in our Salesian communities and in our educative and pastoral communities, to values which promote the dignity of the human person, not only through teaching but also through witness.

This kind of scrutiny and evaluation will, as a consequence, lead us to put certain choices into practice, which are deeply rooted in our charism; in particular it will ask us to:

• renew our choice of starting from those who are the least in any Salesian work (Cr. GC26 106), educating to responsibility for human rights in all our works and activities: schools, technical and professional formation centres, universities, oratories and youth centres, parishes, associations, groups. Works that are not directly concerned with hardship and marginalisation can and must also educate to and for human rights (Cf. GC26, 107). Human rights will help change the status quo, power structures and dominant life styles, consumer patterns; they are a powerful means at our disposition for promoting and protecting the young who are more at risk, weak, in need.

• renew our choice for a complete education, where edcuation and evangelisation are like two sides of the same coin (Cf. GC26, 29). Holistic education of this kind means educating young people to social and political involvement following the inspiration of the Church's Social Teaching (Cf. GC26, 43). In Chapter 25 of Matthew's Gospel those who are blessed because they have given the hungry to eat and the thirsty to drink ask God when it is that they saw the hungry or thirsty person; and they ask because they thought they were doing something simply human which bore no reference to eternal life. The Gospel word responds by identifying the presence of God the Saviour in the least of all human beings.

I would venture to say that when the Salesian, urged on by God's love, gets involved in fostering human rights, he or she is celebrating a liturgy of human rights since the glory of God is man alive (Ps 150); this is why I dare tlak of a liturgy of human rights.

As disciples of Jesus, in the light of faith, we can appreciate human rights as the bringing into history of God's plan, without forgetting that these rights are a providential response to the cry of millions of men and women, including non-believers, who invoke their dignity when it is being trampled upon.

3. Fruitful mutuality between the preventive system and human rights

The preventive system and human rights interact in a mutually beneficial way. The preventive system offers human rights a unique and innovative educational approach regarding the movement to foster and protect human rights up to now identified by denouncing "ex post”, meaning the denunciation of violations already committed. The preventive system offers human rights preventive education, meaning an action and proposal which is “ex ante”.

As believers we can say that the preventive system offers human rights an anthropology inspired by a Gospel spirituality and sees the basis of human rights as the existential fact of the dignity of each human being “without distinction of any kind, of race, colour, sex, language, creed, political or any other opinion, national or social origins, of wealth, birth or other circumstance”².

In the same way human rights offer the preventive system new frontiers and opportunities for dialogue and networking with other bodies with a view to identifying and removing the causes of injustice, iniquity and violence. Besides, human rights offer the preventive system new frontiers and opportunities for social and cultural impact as an effective response to the “drama of modern humanity's rupture between education and society, divide between school and citizenship³”.

In the new globalied context human rights become a tool capable of going beyond narrow national confines to set common limits and objectives, create alliances and strategiesand mobilise resources both human and economic.

4. Conclusion

Don Bosco could not speak of the human rights of children and adolescents, because that legal category did not exist; but Don Bosco was a precursor of so many of the elements in a view of the child and adolescent which is today defined by the language of human rights. In the same way Don Bosco was a precursor of so many elements of what today is called education to responsible world citizenship.

Dear brothers and sisters, this Congress did not set out to be the closing event for the Strenna for 2008, but intended to provide a decisive impulse for sustaining the development of a path of research, formation and action which we now have to take forward in our provincial and local circumstances. This is consistent with the 26th General Chapter which has entrusted its putting into practice to us, especially in reference to the core ideas of the urgency of evangelisation, evangelical poverty and new frontiers. This is the path for the Congregation to follow.

I am happy that in this Congress representatives of Salesian Family Groups have also been present; it will make it easier to reflect, form ourselves and work together on this new educational front.

During these days there has been a symbol which has accompanied us and which has aimed at symbolising Christ attracting our gaze from on high and we ourselves, called to live with feet firmly planted on the ground but gaze fixed on heaven, the young, espeically the poor, abandoned and at risk whom we must help to become good Christians, honest citizens and one day citizens of heaven. It is a metaphor of freedom and joy of living in the fullness of human dignity.

I entrust to Mary Help of Christians our Mother and Teacher, you, your work, our commitment to being faithful to Don Bosco and the young. May she continue to guide us and shape our pastoral hearts come as she did with Don Bosco.

Rome, 6 January 2009

Solemnity of the Epiphany

Fr Pascual Chávez Villanueva

Rector Major