Don Bosco also had the merit of knowing how to form and
launch many collaborators and writers in their careers, like Bonetti, Lemoyne, Francesia, Barberis and others. Fr Bonetti became the editor of the Salesian Bulletin and author of a History of the Oratory which, says Fr. Ceria, was a “precious monument to Don Bosco”.105 Given easily to argument, he received many a reminder from his editor-in-chief about being calm and serene. Fr Lemoyne, more at ease with poetics and narrative, is known especially for his Life of Don Bosco and the Salesian Society and as author of the first nine volumes of the Biographical Memoirs. The smiling and candid Fr Francesia was a Latinist of note, friend of the famous Vallauri from Turin. Don Bosco’s Salesians also launched other series before their father died: the Letture ascetiche on spirituality, the Letture drammatiche on youthful theatre, the Letture amene and the Bibliotechina dell’operaio.
Don Bosco saw the value of the press as a way of spreading “good books”. So, what is a good book? It is a book in which “the thoughts, principles, morality” draw their consistency “from the apostolic tradition and books”. He would write in a circular in 1885with these well-weighed statements: “I do not hesitate to call this approach divine, since God himself used it to regenerate mankind. It was the books inspired by him that brought correct doctrine into the world. He wanted all the cities and villages of Palestine to have copies so that every Sabbath they would be read in religious assemblies. At the beginning these books were the patrimony of the Jewish people alone, but brought by tribes in captivity to Assyria and Caldea, the Holy Scriptures were translated into Syro-Caldaic and all Central Asia were able to have them in their own language. Given the power of Greece at the time, the Jews brought their colonies to every corner of the earth and with them the Holy Books multiplied infinitely and the Septuagint, through their version, enriched even the libraries of the pagan peoples; so orators, poets, philosophers of those times drew more than a few truths from the Bible. God, principally through his inspired books, prepared the world for the coming of the Saviour”.106 On the first page of the first edition of the Bollettino salesiano, under the title, there was a Gospel text as a kind of slogan: “Whoever welcomes a little child in my name, welcomes me” (Mt 18:5). Beginning with January of the second year of the Bollettino salesiano we find other Scriptural quotations or ideas inspired by Scripture: “Make use of the time until I arrive, reading E. Ceria, Profili dei Capitolari Salesiani, 151 G. Bosco, Epistolario. Introduction critical texts and notes by Francesco Motto, vol. IV (1873-1875), Roma, LAS, 2003, 318-319.
105
50
106