The Provincial Commissions are making many suggestions on the Oratory, understood as an environment, whether festive or daily, intended especially for young people (children and pre-adolescents); and similarly, on the Youth Center, intended especially for adolescents and young adults, with various proposals for integral maturation, with a prevalence of group methodology for a human and Christian commitment.
In the Salesian Congregation there are about 1,010 festive Oratories, 502 daily Oratories, 377 Youth Centers, 579 Youth Centers.
The contributions of the Provinces highlight the welcoming and joyful atmosphere of these structures, which, through personal relationships and the educational presence of the animators, helps the beneficiaries to move from spontaneous groups to more stable and defined ones. They emphasize the promotion of youth participation and protagonism, responding with concrete means to the interests, concerns and needs of young people. Also considered important is for this pastoral sector to make a proposal of values and education in the faith with itineraries, groups and by making spaces for celebration possible.
The Oratory is open to a wide audience, a reference and radiating environment. It is precisely for this reason that everything becomes an oratory: be it the welcome for play as well as spontaneous encounters in the courtyard, the offer of engagement in sports and cultural activities (music, dance, theatre, etc.) as well as direct involvement in apostolic animation.
The pastoral delegates emphasized that one of the characteristics of the Oratory-Youth Center environment is its flexibility and its great ability to adapt quickly to changes and new realities. Moreover, because of its broadly welcoming character, the Youth Center remains what the Youth Ministry Framework expresses: the Oratory is "open to a wide variety of children, adolescents and older young people, especially those most in need. It has a social influence and impact in the area." (p. 187).
The Oratory is everyone's second home, where one perceives everything as familiar and feels at ease. For many, it is the home where one welcomes, announces oneself, bears witnesses, celebrates, and seeks new ways to share one's experience and affection for God. The Oratory is not a cenacle for the best, it is not a place of recovery for those in serious deviance. It is built to the measure of 'this' boy or ordinary young man (distant), the category to which the largest number belongs today.
''The work that will forever remain the model and type of our Youth Ministry is the 'Oratory','' Fr. Miguel Angel García Morcuende, General Councilor for Youth Ministry, affirms in conclusion. ''We find the charity and goodness proper to the Preventive System in this reality, when with Don Bosco there was Mamma Margaret and when things worked precisely according to the heart.''
