(ANS - Venice) - The saints ... perhaps we should pray to them more and more intensely, appeal more often to their intercession, implore they intervene to save and to save us. The saints are there, but they wait to be disturbed: they propose, but do not impose themselves. Knowing their history and having the image in your pocket is fine, but asking forcefully for their intervention is another thing. Maybe we think we can do it alone, victims of a world that has placed people in their own hands, in the finite, and not in the hands of God, to the Infinite.

Italy - October 2020 - On 24 October the meeting of Italy's Salesian Youth Movement (SYM) took place online, replacing the SYM National Assembly, which should have taken place in Mestre, but which due to the pandemic was rescheduled for the spring of 2021. The event took place online on the Meet platform and was attended by SYM Italy National Council members and many others scheduled to attend the Assembly in Mestre. The meeting was divided into three moments, which reflect the phases of the method of discernment: recognizing, interpreting, choosing. After a reflection on an evangelical parable, the meeting's central moment was the sharing of reflections on what we perceive today by going to the cities, and looking around, what the SYM's field of action is, and how we should work on it. It emerged that despite the difficulties, everyone is convinced that it is necessary to get involved in order to move forward. The event ended with the testimony of a former SYM animator.

(ANS – Rome) – As is the case each year, new missionaries ad gentes were sent out by the Rector Major in 2018, as part of the 149^th Salesian Missionary Expedition. One of them is Cl. Anthony Panmei. His destination was the ICC (Central Italian province) with its headquarters in Rome.

(ANS - Rome) - The Salesian commitment to fight Covid-19 is a global initiative as much as the pandemic is global, and has not left any Salesian Province or presence in the world indifferent. This is true not only in the extreme peripheries of the Congregation, but also at its base: last Friday, at the "Sacred Heart" in Rome, which houses the Salesian Headquarters, the young people of the Salesian oratory, in collaboration with the international volunteer organization "Serve the City", distributed health kits for the prevention of coronavirus infections to the homeless around Termini station.

Turin, Italy - October 2020 - Once the Don Bosco House Museum was inaugurated, last 4 October, and after listening to the requests of many faithful in recent years and the desire of many friends of the Salesian house in Valdocco, in perfect harmony with the project planned for the Salesian Places of the Mother House, and with the support of the Rector Major, Fr Ángel Fernández Artime, and all the people who worked to make this dream come true, on 24 October, the monthly commemoration of Mary Help of Christians, Perpetual Adoration began at the Pinardi di Valdocco Chapel. From 8:30 am to 8:30 pm the Pinardi Chapel will remain open for those looking for a quiet, peaceful and silent place of prayer in Valdocco. Already during the inauguration day, a good group of people went to the chapel to pray the Rosary, thank the Lord for this wonderful gift, and present their deepest needs to the Lord.

(ANS - Rome) - The picture outlined by Caritas Italiana in its annual report on poverty and social exclusion, published last Saturday, October 17, on the occasion of the World Day to Fight Poverty, is a picture with many shadows and some light. Because the Covid-19 pandemic has hit a citizenry that has already been in difficulty for more than a decade and has brought people and households into a situation of need that until that moment were struggling: they are the "new poor". Positive notes, instead, come from the parallel growth of solidarity.