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"Don Bosco" redirects here. For other uses, see Don Bosco (disambiguation). For schools of that name, see Don Bosco School (disambiguation).
"St John Bosco" redirects here. For colleges of that name, see St John Bosco College.
Saint John Bosco
Priest, Confessor, Founder,
"Father and Teacher of Youth"
Born16 August 1815
Castelnuovo d'Asti, Piedmont, Kingdom of Sardinia
Died31 January 1888 (aged 72)
Turin, Kingdom of Italy
Venerated inRoman Catholic Church
Beatified2 June 1929[1], Rome by Pius XI
Canonized1 April 1934, Rome by Pius XI
Major shrineBasilica of Our Lady Help of Christians, Turin, Italy
Feast31 January
Patronage
Christian apprentices
editors
publishers
schoolchildren
young people
magicians
juvenile delinquents
John Bosco (Italian: Giovanni Melchiorre Bosco; 16 August 1815[2] – 31 January 1888),[3][4][5] popularly known as Don Bosco [ˈdɔn ˈbɔsko], was an Italian Roman Catholic priest, educator and writer of the 19th century. While working in Turin, where the population suffered many of the effects of industrialization and urbanization, he dedicated his life to the betterment and education of street children, juvenile delinquents, and other disadvantaged youth. He developed teaching methods based on love rather than punishment, a method that became known as the Salesian Preventive System.[6]
A follower of the spirituality and philosophy of Francis de Sales, Bosco was an ardent devotee of Mary, mother of Jesus, under the title Mary Help of Christians. He later dedicated his works to De Sales when he founded the Salesians of Don Bosco, based in Turin.[7] Together with Maria Domenica Mazzarello, he founded the Institute of the Daughters of Mary Help of Christians, a religious congregation of nuns dedicated to the care and education of poor girls. He taught Dominic Savio, of whom he wrote a biography that helped the young boy be canonized.
On 18 April 1869, one year after the construction of the Basilica of Mary Help of Christians in Turin, Don Bosco established the Association of Mary Help of Christians (ADMA) connecting it with commitments easily fulfilled by most common people, to the spirituality and the mission of the Salesian Congregation (CG 24 SDB, 1996, NR. 80). The ADMA was founded to promote the veneration of the Most Holy Sacrament and Mary Help of Christians (Don Bosco, Association of the Devotees of Mary Help of Christians, San Benigno can. 1890, page 33).[8]
In 1876 Bosco founded a movement of laity, the Association of Salesian Cooperators, with the same educational mission to the poor.[9] In 1875, he began to publish the Salesian Bulletin.[10][11] The Bulletin has remained in continuous publication, and is currently published in 50 different editions and 30 languages.[10]
Bosco established a network of organizations and centres to carry on his work. Following his beatification in 1929, he was canonized as a saint in the Roman Catholic Church by Pope Pius XI in 1934
