«He summoned those He wanted and they came to Him» (Mk 3,13)
ON THE 150th ANNIVERSARY OF THE FOUNDING
OF THE SALESIAN CONGREGATION
Our young ‘founding fathers’
So the Salesian Congregation came into existence. So we came into existence. Those eighteen are our ‘founding fathers’, most of theme extremely young; with the exception of Fr Alasonatti, 47 years of age, and Don Bosco, 44 years of age; Fr Rua, spiritual director was 22 years of age; Fr Savio, the economer, 24; the councilors, still clerics, were all in their twenties.
It seems to me useful to give at least a sketch of them to preserve them in our minds and hearts as our co-founders with Don Bosco. They are part of Don Bosco’s life and of the history of the Congregation, and therefore of ours.
Victor Alasonatti, 47 years of age
The only one older than Don Bosco. An amiable yet stern priest, for 19 years he had been a teacher of the children in the elementary school in Avigliana, where he had been born on 15 November 1812. Joking and pulling his leg (they had been companions at the Ecclesiastical College), Don Bosco persuaded him to come to the Oratory to ‘help him to say the Breviary’ among the two hundred boys in the house and the thousand in the Oratory (‘Not a bit like your little school!’ joked Don Bosco).
He arrived the evening before the feast of the Assumption in 1854, keeping up the joke with Don Bosco: “Where do I go to say the Breviary?” Don Bosco put onto his shoulders all the administration of his house, until then managed by Joseph Buzzetti and Mamma Margaret (worn out by now: she was to die two years later). In 1855, after Michael Rua, he was the first to take private religious vows into the hands of Don Bosco.
He was professed as a Salesian on 14 May 1862. He worked ceaselessly and quietly for Don Bosco and the Salesian Society, as the first Prefect, until his death at Lanzo on 7 October 1865 when he was 53 years of age.
Michael Rua, 22 years of age
Born in Turin on 9 June 1837 into a working class family, he lost his father at eight years of age. He became fascinated by Don Bosco while attending the first schools of the De La Salle Brothers. He declared under oath: “I remember that when Don Bosco came to say Mass for us […], something like an electric shock seemed to run through all the children. They would jump to their feet and leave their places to mill about him […] It took quite some time before he could get through to the sacristy. There was nothing the good Brothers could do to prevent this apparent disorder, and so we had our way. Nothing of this sort happened when other priests came, even pious and renowned ones …
The secret of this attachment could only be explained by their awareness of the spiritual and untiring love he felt for their souls.” Sometimes Don Bosco gave everyone a little medal. When it was Michael’s turn, Don Bosco made a strange gesture: holding out his right hand he pretended to cut it with his left while saying to him: “Take it Michael take it.” Michael didn’t understand but Don Bosco explained it for him: “We two we’ll go halves in everything.”
He entered the Oratory on 25 September 1852 and put on the clerical habit at the Becchi, on 3 October 1852; he really became Don Bosco’s right hand man: on 26 January 1854 he took part in the meeting where the close-knit group of collaborators received the same of ‘Salesians’. On 25 March 1855 (at 18 years of age) he became the first Salesian taking private vows in the hands of Don Bosco.
As a student of theology he helped Don Bosco in the St Aloysius Oratory; in 1858 he accompanied him to Rome to meet the Pope, to whom Don Bosco presents his Congregation. Still only a subdeacon he is elected Spiritual Director of the Society just begun. Ordained a priest on 29 July 1860, he makes his perpetual profession on 15 November 1865. At 26 years of age (1863), he obtains his diploma as a secondary school teacher and is sent by Don Bosco to direct the first Salesian house outside Turin, at Mirabello Monferrato.
Having returned to Turin in 1865 he is “the second Don Bosco’ in the Salesian Work which is continuing to expand. Don Bosco will say one day: “If God had said to me: ‘Choose a boy endowed with all the virtues and talents you would like him to have, and I will give him to you’, I would never have a imagined anyone as gifted as Fr Rua”. Appointed by Leo XIII Vicar of Don Bosco in 1884, he becomes, on the death of the Founder, his first Successor and spends his life traveling in order to keep the great family of Don Bosco united and faithful, as it was really exploding in every part of the world.
On Don Bosco’s death he received 64 Salesian houses, 22 years later when he died the foundations had risen to 341. In 1910, the year of his death, the first biography, written by Eliseo Battaglia appears; the title, hitting the mark, describes him well: “A Prince of Kindness.”
Angelo Savio, 24 years of age.
A fellow country man of Don Bosco, he was 15 when he arrived at the Oratory on 4 November 1850. He had already known the little saint Dominic Savio (a few years younger than him) since they lived in neighboring villages. He used to recall: “In the holidays I was at home feeling not very well; he came to cheer me up with his pleasant manner and kind words. Sometimes he came hand in hand with his two little brothers.
Before he left the Oratory for the last time (1857) he came to give me a final hug.” Elected Economer General for the first time in 1859 while still a deacon he was re-elected in 1869, the year of his perpetual profession, and again in 1873. At that time Don Bosco entrusted him with responsibility for the houses being built on the Ligurian coast and on the Cote d’Azur: Alassio, Vallecrosia, Marseille. Then he sent him to Rome to oversee the work of the construction of the Church and the House of the Sacred Heart. At 50 years of age (1885) he asked Don Bosco to let him finish with walls and money and left as a missionary for Patagonia, which he traversed on long apostolic/missionary journeys.
Tireless and zealous he founded Salesian houses in Chile, in Perú, in Paraguay and in Brazil. He died on 17 May 1893 while on a journey of exploration in Ecuador, where a new mission had been entrusted to the Salesians. In the dream of the wheel (4 May 1861) Don Bosco saw him in distant parts. His co-workers remembered him as a deeply prayerful consecrated religious.
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