Appendices The Salesian Missionary Vocation Egidio Viganò, SDB1
The missionary heart of Don Bosco “We may safely say that Don Bosco can be listed among the great missionaries of the 19th century, even though he was never personally on the missions ad gentes. ‘It can be said’, wrote Eugene Ceria, ‘that the missionary idea grew in him’2. It is an idea that is intrinsic to his vocational plan as a Founder, and coextensive with his whole existence. At first it was present in embryo and he was hardly conscious of it, but then it gradually took on a form that became progressively clearer and more distinct. The same thing is said in more incisive or delicate terms by both Fr Paul Albera and Fr Philip Rinaldi, who trace back Don Bosco’s missionary vision to his dream at the age of nine. The foreign missions, wrote Fr Albera, ‘were always a burning aspiration in Don Bosco’s heart, and I am quite sure that Mary Help of Christians, from her first motherly revelations to him while he was still a boy, had given him a clear intuition in this regard... He spoke about it continually to us his first sons; we were filled with wonder and felt ourselves carried away by a holy enthusiasm... At the bedside of young John Cagliero who was dying, Don Bosco saw the Patagonians waiting to receive redemption at Cagliero’s hands, and he foretold his recovery and revealed in part what the future had in store for him’3.
Excerpts from E. VI“The Pope’s Appeal for the Missions”, in AGC 336 (1991) pp. 5-12. 2 E. CERIA, Annali della Società Salesiana I, p. 245. 3 P. ALBERA, Lettere Circolari (Direzione Generale Opere Don Bosco: Torino, 1956) pp. 132-133. 1
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