Our Founder

St. DON BOSCO

JOHN BOSCO was born on 16th August.

1815. When John was two years old his father died, leaving the widow Margaret with an ailing mother-in-law, a step-son and two other boys to make a living on a farm in the hills of Piedmont. Love and hardship characterised the home. Despite all odds, John wanted an education; he wanted to become a priest.

At the age of twelve he left home to find work. At fourteen he found a tutor. At fifteen he began taking jobs of any kind to pay for lodging and school. At the age of twenty six he realised his dream.

“I want to be a priest who cares about children,” he said, and that is what he did. He began, faltering and searching at first, in the industrial city of Turin. His first permanent school was a broken-down shed. The trades he had learnt while working his way through school became the trades he taught to classes given even in his kitchen. His mother joined him in Turin; she became known as “Mamma Margaret- the mother of Don Bosco’s orphans.”

When he needed help, older boys supervised the younger ones, until they formed a huge family with Don Bosco as father. As boys grew to manhood, many stayed to form the

Salesian Society, the world’s third largest religious community. Small classes led to large schools, lessons in crafts to job training. Don Bosco’s unquenchable love became an unquenchable movement all over the world.

Don Bosco inspired the start of a vast movement of persons who in defferent ways work for the salvation of the young. He himself founded not only the society of St. Francis de sales but also the institute of the Daughters of Mary Help of Christians and the Association of Salesian Co-operators.

Don Bosco called his Educational project ‘The Preventive System¹'. It is based entirely on Reason, Religion and, above all, on Kindness. It follows the words of St. paul, “Charity is patient, is kind, it bears all things, hopes all things, endures all things.”

Who was Don Bosco? Historians know him as a social innovator, Saint and educator. Ordinary people know him as a preacher, publisher, builder. Religious- minded people claim him as a clairvoyant, visionary and a prophet. Churchmen and psychologists wonder at the catalogue of his prophetic “dream" and his prolific, even prodigal working of miracles. But his special mission was the care of youth. He was the priest who made them laugh, gave them food, enriched their minds, taught them trades and filled their souls with peace and joy. The church has proclaimed him a Saint and the Father and Teacher of Youth.