Don Bosco had been there 168 years ago: it was 1855 when he visited the "Generala," as the reformatory, that is, the prison for minors, was then called. A few years earlier, in 1841 he had visited the senatorial prisons in Turin, but among the very young it is different: a punch straight in the stomach. He realized that something could and should be done, and here was the spark that would lead him to create oratories as "preventive solutions" to juvenile delinquency and in response to juvenile distress.
"It is enough for me that you are young for me to love you": on 1 February, with these words of the founder, Salesian Rector Major Fr. Á.F. Ártime, knocked at the door of Turin's Ferrante Aporti juvenile detention facility where for years the Salesian novices have been animating "the courtyard behind bars," a kind of oratory inside the correctional institution.
"It is enough for me that you are young for me to love you": with these words of the founder, the Rector Major of the Salesians Fr. Á.F. Ártime, knocked on 1 February on the door of the prison for juveniles in Turin Ferrante Aporti, a juvenile prison in Turin, where for years the Salesian novices have been animating "the courtyard behind bars", a sort of oratory inside the institute of pain.
"I met 35 of them. We even ate pizza together and some wanted to talk privately," the Rector Major told Vatican News, "but first they performed a skit from the life of Don Bosco. They asked me many questions about him; I was very impressed by their curiosity and their respect for the figure of our Saint, who was convinced that in the heart of every boy, and therefore also in each one of them, as I was keen to emphasize, there is a seed from which good can sprout."
This was the way Don Bosco loved his young people and it is the way the Salesians still love them today. "We believe in you and in your possibilities, we know that being in prison is only a moment of your life; it is not your whole life," said Fr. Á.F. Artime to the guests of Ferrante Aporti. "Next year I’d like to find you in another place, perhaps among the hundreds of young people who are celebrating with us the solemnity of the founder."
With this visit, the Rector Major says he felt even closer to St. John Bosco and sensed the joy he felt at being among young people, but at the same time also the bitterness of seeing them in a place like the prison, a pain that led him to the creation of a clean, free and shared space like the oratory.
"I'm here because I listened to the wrong people, but I want another life": these are words Fr. Á.F. Artime has often heard from inmates in the prisons he has visited, even abroad. And again, "What good does it do me to be here?" "Being here, if you were here forever, would be of no use to you," is the answer of Don Bosco's Tenth Successor, "but being here for a time serves you to reflect, to treasure the experience to find a way to never return." And this is another valuable teaching that comes from Don Bosco, not by chance called "the Saint of the young" by another saint who knew about young people: John Paul II.
