This was followed by an address by Prof. Angelo Dibisceglia, Professor of Church History at the Faculty of Theology, who proposed an interesting excursus on the Jubilee as an expression of the times that the Church has experienced from 1300 to the present day.
An ideal journey through the complex web of historical and political events and cultural revolutions to which the Church has always given a concrete response. The exhibition in the Library is aimed at showing visitors the traces in history, in print, of the Church’s concern for the salvation of souls. Testimony to the first Jubilee in history, called by Boniface VIII in 1300, is the reproduction of the Bull of indiction ‘Antiquorum Habet Fida Relatio’, kindly granted by Fr Mauro Mantovani, Prefect of the Vatican Apostolic Library, which preserves the original. We are then led into the 19th century through Don Bosco's writings on the Jubilee as experienced in the 1875 Holy Year, together with other bibliographical evidence from the Don Bosco Study Centre collection.
Finally, the History of the Holy Years in the Twentieth Century is exemplified in the newspapers of the time. The front pages of the main Catholic newspapers accompany the visitor through the news of the opening Christmas nights of the Holy Years in the 20th century. This material, as well as the bibliographic exhibition on the Jubilee theme, is part of the heritage of the ‘Don Bosco’ Library.
Source: Salesian Pontifical University
