The composition of the community is highly heterogeneous, by age (from 25 to 73 years) and by origin (its members are originally from Spain, Italy, Lebanon, Chad and the Democratic Republic of Congo).
Among them, the veteran is Fr Bashir Souccar, a native of Aleppo, who worked 42 years in Alexandria in Egypt and two years in Bethlehem, Palestine, before being sent as a missionary to Tunisia. Today he is strongly committed to this new role of his, trying to make Don Bosco known to young Muslim students, to all the school staff, and to the youth and animators of the oratory.
Here is his testimony:
"For the formation of the young of the school, every morning I pass by the classrooms sharing the 'word of the morning', or 'good morning', visiting one year of the cycle in turn every day, from second to sixth primary, considering that each year is composed of 4-6 classes of the different sections. The word of the morning I draw from the literature inspired by the Salesian preventive system - such as the Salesian Bulletin, the Strennas or the Rector Major's Messages, or the Pope's texts such as the encyclical Fratelli tutti - which may concern a universal pluri-religious audience. The official language used is Arabic, but I often attach the French translation as well. And I end each intervention with an invocation to God.
At the school we also do Salesian pedagogical formation for teachers and non-school staff. For them I mainly use the monthly articles of the Italian Salesian Bulletin of the column 'Like Don Bosco', which I translate and adapt into Arabic.
At the oratory we work in the evening of Saturday and Sunday, and during the summer and in the periods of prolonged holidays we organize a kind of Youth Summer Camp ... Training at the oratory is given to everyone above all with the 'word of the evening' or 'goodnight', which has the same characteristics as the' morning word ', but which always ends with an invocation: for peace, brotherhood, reconciliation, for the poor, refugees….
And there is also an appropriate pedagogical training for the animators of the oratory, whose sources and arguments are similar to those used for school educators."
Fr Souccar’s commitment to transmit the Salesian charism and to make Don Bosco’s Preventive System known has no boundaries. In fact, recently he also committed to sharing, translated into Arabic, the Rector Major's Facebook posts. For those who wish, some articles from the Italian Salesian Bulletin translated into Arabic by Fr Souccar are freely available at the end of this article.
