Italy – The “Valdocco Shop” goes online

18 February 2021

(ANS - Turin) - It was in the early 1960s when a shop selling religious objects appeared for the first time in the courtyard of Valdocco, the Mother House of the Salesian Congregation. It was born from a beautiful intuition. There were many pilgrims and missionaries already back then: all eager to bring home objects that would narrate and recall the presence of Mary Help of Christians and Don Bosco on their return to their lands of origin or mission. From this intuition comes a service that still persists, and today has expanded to the web. In fact, the website has been recently activated: http://www.valdoccoshop.it/ 

The motivation is that of the origins: to bring religious objects to lands far away from Valdocco that recall the charism breathed in the courtyard of the cradle of the Salesian charism, where everything was born.

Of course, some memories, some experiences, can only be kept in the heart. But an object can help to remember it, to crystallize over time the taste or experience of something good that has been tried, to more easily tell loved ones of a beauty that has been known and one has managed to experience.

On the site you can find prayer tools, devotional objects, votive images, and more. There are, of course, many gift items and souvenirs with the effigy of Don Bosco, Mary Help of Christians, Domenico Savio, the Basilica of Mary Help of Christians ...

“We believe that this place makes sense if lived as a service: and thus you can also find gadgets or objects for use by oratories or pastoral activities. But also statues, icons, and paintings that can be of use in Salesian communities,” explained Fr Guido Errico, Rector of the Shrine.

In recent years, a bookshop has been added to the shop for religious souvenirs, whose uniqueness is a catalog full of publications on the charism and the Salesian Family. This catalog can also be consulted online, together with pastoral, catechetical or spirituality books which are certainly of great interest to the Salesian world.

Especially now, in the context of a pandemic that has afflicted the world for a year and that is limiting a lot of travel and pilgrimages, the opening of the site for the shop/bookstore becomes an important option for many.

“The web allows us to look out onto the whole world, so shipments are designed to reach abroad as well,” concludes Fr Errico. “In our own small way, we try to bring a piece of Valdocco closer to your homes and communities. We have always done so, now even more.”

InfoANS

ANS - “Agenzia iNfo Salesiana” is a on-line almost daily publication, the communication agency of the Salesian Congregation enrolled in the Press Register of the Tibunal of Rome as n 153/2007.

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