John Bosco became a priest and his first job was as chaplain to The Refuge, a boarding school for girls. He also visited prisoners and filled in for other neighbouring priests. John was not a man to stand on his dignity. When he saw the numbers of street boys he knew he had to do something to help them, but first he had to attract their attention and gain their trust. He learned how to juggle and perform extraordinary feats of balance. He also became a skilled magician[1]. These skills impressed a group of rough and uncouth boys who came to watch and then attend Mass with him on Sunday at the Refuge. He called it the “Oratory of St. Francis de Sales” after the educator he most admired. The boys’ noise and antics soon led to John being sacked. However, the idea of the Oratory persisted.
John tried to establish an Oratory in several towns, one after the other, but the kind of unruly urchins he attracted always led to his being asked to leave. Eventually he rented a small property and he and his mother began to take in orphans. He was both lucky and unlucky in his supporters, one of whom was the Justice Minister who tried his best to suppress religious orders. The Minister recognised the value of Bosco’s work with poor children and told him how to take advantage of a loophole in the law he was proposing. At the other end of the scale, Pope Pius IX also supported his work which began to prosper.
By 1859 Bosco’s organisation was big enough to call itself the “Society of St. Francis de Sales”. There were 17 members – a priest, 15 young men training for priesthood and one schoolboy. This was the beginning of the Salesians. Today there are more than 20000 Salesians forming the third largest missionary organisation in the world.
John Bosco’s success with disorderly, disruptive and boisterous boys was based on his “Preventive System of Education”. This system had three main elements: kindness, reason and religion. There was also plenty of music, fun and games. He did not believe in punishment. His principle was that people must not only be loved but also know that they are loved. Of course he had enemies among those who believed his methods could never work and churchmen who disliked his lack of dignity. They believed he set a bad example of what a priest should be like.
However, people close to him began to keep a record of the things he said and did. By the time of his death his friends had collected 77 books filled with scraps of fact and conversation recording the life and works of a man who changed so many lives. He was canonised in 1934.
Author: C B Whittle