women of the laity ready to collaborate in the education sector as Cooperators.
For Priests: Don Bosco expected them to follow the normal seminary and religious curriculum: high school, novitiate, college with philosophy and four years of theology.
For Coadjutors: a course of professional formation, the novitiate and a period of religious and technical updating were expected to be followed.
For Cooperators: periodical meetings for spiritual and apostolic animation were expected to be followed as well.
It was not only practical reasons like preparing personnel for his rapidly expanding and wide-reaching work which saw Don Bosco reluctant to have his collaborators go through a period of formation. His socially-directed educational system demanded the continuous and active presence of the educators among the boys and the sharing of their lives and interests.1322
Ascetic, cultural and professional formation could never have had an adequate development apart from
the educative community. The formation of Priests and Brothers who wanted to consecrate th eir entire life assisting full -time in educating the young would not have occurred unles within the educative
community or with a close connection with it. Experience, made more meaningful by the daily contact
with the young and with co -workers, guided by the Rector who is the 'educator of the educators', had to
stand as a qualifying factor in the educational maturing of Don Bosco's Salesians.
Naturally, this maturing process had to be supported by a process of cultural, philosophical, theological
and basi cally professional formation.
1323
The Constitutions of the Salesian Societypubloished and presented to Rome for definitive approval in
1874, have a chapter, chapter 14, which deals with the Director of Novices and their formation.
The following mandate was included in it:
The aim of our Congregation is that of instructing the young and especially the poorest
among them surrounded by the dangers of the world, with knowledge and religion, and to
guide them along the way to salvation. Therefore all the novices after their second trial
period should be engaged in the demanding exercise of studying, teaching in night and day
schools, teaching catechism to the children and offering assistance in more difficult
cases.
1324
Don Bosco was motivated to seek a special disp ensation: “for the right to have a trial period to find out whether the aspirants have the ability to assist and instruct youth”.1325But the battle was lost; the norm was not approved.
Practically speaking, Don Bosco already carried out a practical training in education and kept on carrying it out, both as part of and beyond the novitiate, as a necessary complement to the spiritual and cultural formation of the Salesians.1326
This was an intuition in tune with Don Bosco's sensitivity, his vast visionary capacity, which included
realism enveloped by the passion to achieve grandiose projects which youth needed. For these visions
1322 M. Guasco, Don Bosco nella storia religiosa del suo tempo, in Don Bosco e le sfide della modernità, pp. 32-33. He
speaks of Don Bosco “a man of sharing”, and “incarnation” who created a certain “kind of priest”.
1323 Cf. P. Braido, Un nuovo prete e la sua formazione culturale secondo don Bosco. Intuizioni, aporie, virtualità, RSS
8 (1989) 7-55.
1324 Regulae Societatis S. Francisci Salesii, Romae, Typis S.C. De Propaganda Fide 1874, caput XIV, art. 8, p. 35, OE
XXV 287, published again the following March, OE XXV 329.
1325 Consultazione per una Congregazione particolare, in March 1874, p. 12, OE XXV 398.
1326 Cf. P. Braido, L'idea della Società Salesiana nel «Cenno istorico» di don Bosco del 1873/74, RSS 6 (1987) 261-
301.