John Bosco
John Melchior Bosco, SDB (16 August 1815 – 31 January 1888), popularly known as Don Bosco, was an Italian Catholic priest, educator, and writer. While working in Turin, where the population suffered many of the ill 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.
As a follower of the spirituality and philosophy of Francis de Sales, Bosco was an ardent devotee of the Virgin Mary 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. Together with Maria Domenica Mazzarello, he founded the Institute of the Daughters of Mary Help of Christians, now commonly known as the Salesian Sisters of Don Bosco, 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. He is one of the pioneers of mutual aid societies that were initiated as collaborative financial support to young migrant Catholic workers in Turin. In 1850, he drew up regulations to assist apprentices and their companions when they were involuntarily without work or fell ill.
On 18 April 1869, a year after the construction of the Basilica of Mary Help of Christians in Turin, 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. The ADMA was founded to promote the veneration of the Most Holy Sacrament and Mary Help of Christians.
Patron saint of Christian apprentices; editors; publishers; students; young children; magicians; juvenile delinquents; Piura, Peru; Brasília, Brazil
In the Martyrology
- January 31 Saint John Bosco, priest, founder of the Salesian Society and Daughters of the Help of Christians