On the weekend of the 14th-16th June 2024, teachers and staff from our Salesian schools visited the Holy Places of St John Bosco in Turin.
Below is an account of the visit from Dr Toal and Mr Yates, Senior leadership team staff members at Salesian College, Farnborough.

With other Salesian teaching and support staff from a range of Salesian schools and associated agencies, we visited Turin to find out more about St John Bosco, founder of the Salesian order. This was an opportunity to reflect on John's life and educational legacy bequeathed to those men and women who would follow and instruct in how to teach about the faith, by the faith and from the faith. This was an opportunity to gain first-hand a sense of the wealth of compassionate influence John had on so many young people, and to gain a better understanding of his humble origins.

We were expertly led by Father John Dickson SDB, who provided outstanding insights into John's life, upbringing, and efforts to establish a monument of education for the welfare of young people. We visited Castelnuovo d'Asti, just outside Turin, where John was born on August 16, 1815, learning of the poverty of his upbringing and of the early tragedy of his father dying when John was still a toddler - just two years old.

We heard about an early dream when he was 9 years old which transfixed him and became the catalyst for his own transformation and the basis of the Salesian educational approach. He dreamed of children playing in a field, laughing, joking and even cursing. Shocked by this, he intervened, shouting at them to stop, at which point a man appeared and said, "'You will have to win these friends of yours not with blows, but with gentleness and kindness". At another point, a Lady of majestic appearance comes on the scene to say to him. "This is your field; this is where you must work." The figures representing our Lord Jesus Christ and His Blessed Mother Mary play a central role in the origins of the Salesian educational approach, the preventive system, which rejected corporal punishment and favoured placing students in surroundings removed from the likelihood of committing sin.

We also learned about how, after serving as Chaplain in a hospice for working girls, Don Bosco opened the Oratory of St. Francis de Sales for boys, which we visited. This gave us first hand insight into John's passionate concern for the poor and marginalised. We also were informed of his wheelings and dealings and although no Del Boy, he was certainly an impressive influencer of his day! He was very astute at convincing several wealthy and powerful patrons to contribute to the building up of the Oratory, enabling him to provide workshops for the boys, to advance their technical ability in areas such as shoemaking and tailoring.

We visited the Basilica of Mary Help of Christians, where John's body is interred and attended mass, receiving the Eucharist where John himself had been inspired to serve and love. Overall, it was a moving experience and reminded all present of the simplicity of Salesian education. That is to say that education is encounter; it's in the journey of relationships where we witness, give and receive loving kindness. That is as true in our Salesian schools today as it was almost 200 years ago.