at Lucca; the Hospices of Montevideo and Buenos Aires.701

Very similar undertakings, indicative of a Catholic reawakening, were opened in Uruguay and

Argentina. These were actually considered to be the more or less remote launching platform for a different kind of missionary evangelisation. This strategy is recorded in numerous documents which prefigure a rather ambitious plan which he had already made known to Cardinal Franchi in 1877.

We thought it best to create a new experiment. We are not going to send missionaries

anymor e to work among the savages but go to the outskirts of civilized towns and then

found churches, schools and hospices with a twofold objective: 1. Help preserve the faith of

those who have already received it 2. Instruct and provide shelter for the indigen

(Indios) people living among Catholics either by religious desire or for other needs. The

goal was to establish relationships with the parents through their children, so that the

savages might become the evangelisers of the savages themselves.

702

ous

There i s another kind of interest in the young, particularly dear to Don Bosco, and which occupied him

throughout his life: interest in young people called to an ecclesiastical or religious state. Naturally,

these young people cannot be referred to as 'at risk' o r 'abandoned', even though at times they came

from families of modest means. “They are good-natured youngsters, who love the practices of piety, and who offer some hope that they are called to the Ecclesiastical state”.703 The danger to which these ones are exposed does not come from the street or from the fact of being abandoned, but that they might “lose their vocation” through lack of material means and adequate care. This is one of the primary objectives of the Salesian Society: “Since the young who aspire to the ecclesiastical state are exposed to many and serious dangers, this Society will do its very best to make sure that those youngsters who show a special capacity for study and are commendable for their moral behavior, be fostered in the upkeep of their piety”.704

The Cooperators Association's regulations called on them to support “youngsters who have an ecclesiastical vocation” apostolically, spiritually and financially.705

The vocation experience has its beginning in 1849 and Don Bosco, despite obviousexaggeration, wrote about it as follows: “We might say that the house attached to the Oratory became a diocesan seminary for some twenty years”.706

A similar function is attributed to all the undertakings that followed: hospices, boarding schools and agricultural schools, all of which offered cheap tuition. They had exactly the same aim: “to give the greatest number of talented young people the opportunity to receive an education which was a Christian education so that in time they may turn out to be good priests or courageous missionaries or wise fathers of families”.707

In 1877, Don Bosco would establish a stable set of rules, the 'Rules for the Houses', for the gradually developing works, along with the parallel 'Rules for the day students'. Every house, as far as possible, was expected to have an oratory attached to it: “The general aim of the houses of the Congregation is to

701E III 455-456; similar concepts taken up again in a memorial to Leo XIII also March 1879, E III 462-464.

702Letter of 31 Dec. 1877. E III 257-259. Identical ideas expressed to the new Prefect of Propaganda Fide, Car. Simeoni, in

March 1877, E III 320-321; to Leo XIII 13 April 1880, E III 568-567; the Memoriale intorno alle Missioni salesiane

presents an analytical view of Salesian work overseas, substantially the same as what is in Europe adding certain

concrete missionary ideas for the future; to Propaganda Fide in Lyon March 1882, E IV 123-127.

703Conference to Salesian Cooperators, Turin, Valdocco 23 May 1879, BS 3 (1879) no. 6 June, p.3.

704Regole o Costituzioni della Società di S. Francesco di Sales. Turin Salesian Print Shop and Bookshop 1875, chap 1, art

5, p.4. OE XXVII 54

705Cooperatori salesiani ossia un modo pratico... 1876, p. 7, OE XXVIII 261.

706MO (1991) 195.

707Conference to Cooperators at Casale Monferrato 17 Nov. 1881, BS 5 (1881) no. 12, Dec. p. 5.