Don Bosco, writing in his “Memoirs of the Oratory”, had recounted his cordial meeting with an orphaned youth in the church of St Francis of Assisi. That church has a lot of connections with Don Bosco. It is there that Don Bosco celebrated his First Mass, at the altar of the Guardian Angel. Don Caffasso lived in one of the rooms above the sacristy. By the side of the sacristy, there is a little courtyard, which was used by that first group boys animated by Don Bosco.
That boy, named Bartholomeo Garelli, migrated into the city from the countryside of Asti, was wandering near the sacristy of that church, where Don Bosco was about to celebrate the Mass. Had it not been for Don Bosco, the sacristan would have succeeded in driving him away with a stick. After the Church Services, Don Bosco talked with him in a kind way, giving him a brief catechism lesson and ending with a Marian prayer. Now a Statue of Don Bosco and a marble plaque reminds the visitors of that first encounter with Bartolomeo Garelli 175 years ago as narrated by Don Bosco.
From that first encounter came other encounters with other needy youth, the expansion into oratories, training centres, schools and parishes in Italy, in Europe and then in the other continents.
Hence, every gesture on the part of the Salesians on behalf of the young in need in the world is placed from the start under the protection of Mary, the One "who has done everything."
Yesterday, on the Solemnity of the Immaculate Conception, during the homily of the Mass Don Ángel Fernández Artime, Rector Major, commented: "what a beautiful gift Don Bosco gave us when recalling the beginnings of the oratory on the day of the Immaculate! This event has already become a prophecy!"
"There are so many Bartholomew Garellis in every corner of the world” he went on. “Maybe not in the sacristy, but certainly at the cross-roads, on the streets, in juvenile homes, in the geographical or social peripheries, in the obscurity of broken families and in the debris of war or among the trash-heaps of abundance ... We too are invited today to respond confidently, albeit with some fear: "here we are, Lord, behold, thy servants, the sons of Don Bosco, be it done for us according to your word!"
