Dear friends of Don Bosco and his charism, I greet you almost at the end of 2020, this year which we have lived through and which we will remember as a hard year, painful in many ways. It is a year that has changed us – without intending to have done so – in our lifestyle, habits, and customs perhaps but, certainly, at least, in the rhythm of our personal, family, and community life. While thinking about all that a year means, I pondered on something that I keep very much in my heart. I don’t know if it is due to how I was raised or to my own nature but I have engraved into my very being the need to give thanks constantly and to be grateful for the so very many things that I receive in my life as a free gift, having  nothing to do with personal merit. I don’t know if others feel this way. Maybe other people consider that everything they have is owed to them, even life itself, but this is not how I feel.

Today the invitation is made to everyone: Come! Get to know Valdocco. Browse around. Experience this place. Be still and listen to what the “walls are saying” because “at Valdocco, everything speaks”... What has taken place in transforming this space is much more than the mere remodeling of walls and rooms. A dream has come to life.

We are united by one mission: "the salvation of many souls, beginning with our own", as our beloved father Don Bosco used to say.