Turin, Italy - 8 December 1841 - In the sacristy of the church of San Francesco d'Assisi, Turin, Don Bosco met Bartolomeo Garelli; here was where the Oratory was born and where Don Bosco began to teach his children “the way of Heaven.”

Turin, Italy - October 1853 - The first construction made at the Oratory in Valdocco was in favor of children; from 1853, Don Bosco took a small room on the third floor for himself. Subsequent rooms were built in 1876-1877 (cit. G. Fedele, 124).

In October, the month of the Rosary, there were numerous gifts to Mary in many parts of the Salesian world  – more so this year due to two important anniversaries: the Centenary of the Apparitions of Fatima and the 300th Anniversary of the finding of the Statue of Our Lady of Aparecida.