Chapter 10
Ways suggested for helping boys with special problems
For Don Bosco, all young people, by dint of being young, are virtually 'at risk'; more so when one considers that they might unknowingly be subject to occult powers. But Don Bosco tends to distinguish them, to classify them.
The first group or category is the largest one; the vast majority which also includes a minority of élite boys because of their moral qualities or because of their calling. He calls these 'the many', meaning “the ones of normal character and nature”. Then there is a “third group, the difficult disciples and the unruly”. In his Regulations for the houses, 1877, he calculates this group to be “one in fifteen” or 6- 7%.768
At the lower end of this scale and immediately connected to it are boys with special difficulties. These
are the 'at risk' (pericolati) types using the terminology of the day, which he never never used:
delinquents, boys involved with the police or a legal process, the ones entrusted to correctional
institutes.
This fourth category was never included in a steady and systemati c way in the educational and
institutional framework that Don Bosco visualised for the majority category. But Don Bosco never
ignored their existence and never excluded them from his interests as priest and educator. Neither did
he exclude them from the re ach of his preventive system. Don Bosco's involvement can be certainly
recognised within four fundamental situations:
1. A direct experience, however marginal, with youngsters in prison and correctional institutions (1841 - 1855).
2. His encounter with' mis chievous' boys within or close to his own institutions.
3. The problematic hypothesis of a reformatory school.
4. The proposal to have his preventive system universally applied, even though in a differentiated
integrated fashion.
1. Don Bosco with young detainees at the Generala
Father Francis Giacomelli, Don Bosco's friend and confessor, gave the following testimony at the Diocesan process for Don Bosco's Beatification and Canonization, on May 2, 1892:
Don Bosco's charity was not restricted to the boys ofhis Oratory, but also had a broader
reach. As a matter of fact, I accompanied him to the prisons where he taught catechism and
heard confessions. I also accompanied him to the 'Hotel for Virtue' where more than 100
boys were boarding.769
Don Bosco began t his work at the urging of Fr Cafasso, while he was at the at the Convitto Ecclesiastico (1841-1844) and he continued it later on, either on his own initiative or in connection with the Oratory work, as pointed out by various converging and interdependent sources.770 Besides all this, what has been said about Don Bosco's ties with the prisons for minors and the
768Regolamento per le case..., Articoli generali, art. 7 p. 16, OE XXIX 112.
769Copia Publica Transumpti Processus ordinria Auctoritate constructi in Curia Ecclesiastica Taurinensi, Vol II, fol, 671v. 770Cf. G. Colombero, Vita del servo di Dio D. Giuseppe Cafasso con cenni storici sul Convitto Ecclesiastico. Turin,
Canonica 1895, pp. 2002-202; L. Nicolis di Robilant, Vita del venerabile Giuseppe Cafasso Confondatore del Convitto
Ecclesiastico di Torino, vol II, pp. 88-89, 94-96; MB II 61-63, 105, 109, 172-184, 273-277, 364-371; VI 531.