The arrival of the Rector Major in the Holy Land is scheduled for Saturday afternoon. The Provincial of the Salesians in the Middle East, Fr Alejandro León, together with a delegation of Salesians, will go directly to the airport to welcome the 10th Successor of Don Bosco and accompany him to the Salesian house in the city. There the Rector Major will greet the young people present and pray with them, before offering everyone his thoughts in the Salesian Goodnight.
On Sunday morning, after Morning Prayer, Fr Á.F. Artime will preside at the solemn Eucharist for the opening of the centenary of the Basilica. This will be the fundamental act of his brief but significant visit to Nazareth and the territories of the Salesian Province of the Middle East (MOR), dedicated to Jesus the Adolescent. In the early afternoon, after the festive reception for the occasion and a time of agape with the Salesians from the community, the 10th Successor of Don Bosco will take the road back to the airport for his return flight to Turin.
The large and beautiful Basilica of Jesus the Adolescent in Nazareth is the result of the vision of Abbé Maxime Caron, Rector of the minor seminary of Versailles, in Paris, and apostle of devotion to Jesus the Adolescent. In 1901, he learned that the Salesians had started a work in Nazareth and a pious association to this devotion. He founded a similar association, twinned with the one in Nazareth, and began to support the Salesian work financially. In 1905, after visiting the Salesian house in the Holy Land, he expressed the dream of adding a large church to the educational and social services already underway. The following year, Madame Charlotte de Cevilly, widow of the French commander Léon Foäche (+1890), became aware of Abbé Caron's idea and made her inheritance available to build the Shrine to the Adolescent Jesus; and after the agreement she reached in Turin with Fr Michael Rua, the Successor of Don Bosco, the great enterprise began.
The foundation stone was laid in 1907 and the French newspaper Le Figaro launched a subscription to raise funds for the construction of the shrine. Works lasted years, complicated and slowed down by the First World War and the political and military changes in the region following the Great War. Finally, on 6 September 1923, the solemn consecration of the church as a world centre of worship of the Adolescent Jesus took place – and in fact on the eve of the feast the list of members of the pious association promoted by the Salesians had already reached 20,000 names.
The event of the consecration had considerable resonance in the local and foreign press. There was huge participation of the faithful and pilgrims, who also came from France – including Abbé Caron – as well as from numerous other countries. A week of celebrations, religious and cultural events, animated by civil and religious authorities, European and local, followed. The Salesians of the Province also participated, including the Venerable Simon Srugi, a fellow citizen of Jesus and his convinced imitator.
The Salesians in MOR have prepared a special booklet for the centenary (available at the bottom of the page in Italian, English, French and Arabic), which contains, among other things, a message from the Rector Major, who states in this regard:
"What a fascinating model is the Lord as a young man for teenagers and young adults. The Lord who opens himself up to life as an adolescent who lived the “precious years of formation preparing himself for the mission” in the school of Nazareth with Mary and Joseph. This is how the Holy Father, Pope Francis, expressed it. And so it must continue to be for all teenagers and young adults here, and in every part of our world, who can prepare themselves in the “Salesian school of life”, for the mission that the Lord will offer them later, because for each one of them our God has prepared a “dream” that will be realised in their lifetime.”
