Don Bosco Negombo

Vocational Education Sector. The certificates will be given from TVEC (Tertiary and Vocational Education Commission)
Saint Don Bosco

Negombo Don Bosco is another unique institution that has fallen among the handful of institutions that have won the 𝐐𝐔𝐀𝐋𝐈𝐓𝐘 𝐌𝐀𝐍𝐀𝐆𝐄𝐌𝐄𝐍𝐓 𝐈𝐍𝐒𝐓𝐈𝐓𝐔𝐓𝐄 𝐀𝐖𝐀𝐑𝐃 out of the majority of institutions in Sri Lanka. (The award will be given from TVEC (Tertiary and Vocational Education Commission)

Confessor, Founder,
"Father and Teacher of Youth"
Born 16 August 1815 Castelnuovo d'Asti,
Piedmont, Italy
Died 31 January 1888 (aged 72)
Turin, Italy
Honored in Roman Catholic Church,
Anglican Communion
Beatified
2 June 1929, Rome by Pius XI
Canonized
1 April 1934, Rome by Pius XI
Major shrine
The Tomb of St John Bosco, Basilica of Our Lady Help of Christians, Turin, Italy
Feast
31 January
Patronage
Christian apprentices, editors, publishers, schoolchildren, young people, magicians
John Bosco, popularly known as Don Bosco, was an Italian Roman Catholic priest of the Latin Church, educator, and writer of the 19th century, who dedicated his life to the betterment and education of street children, juvenile delinquents, and other disadvantaged youth and employed teaching methods based on love rather than punishment, a method known as the Salesian Preventive System. A follower of the spirituality and philosophy of Saint Francis de Sales, Bosco dedicated his works to him when he founded the Salesians of Don Bosco. Together with Maria Domenica Mazzarello, he founded the Institute of the Daughters of Mary Help of Christians, a religious congregation of nuns dedicated to the care and education of poor girls. In 1876 Bosco founded a movement of laity, the Association of Salesian Cooperators, with the same educational mission to the poor. The Bulletin has remained in continuous publication and is currently published in 50 different editions and 30 languages. Bosco established a network of organizations and centers to carry on his work. Following his beatification in 1929, he was canonized as a saint in the Roman Catholic Church by Pope Pius XI in 1934. Life
Bosco was born on the evening of 16 August 1815 in the hillside hamlet of Becchi, Italy. He was the youngest son of Francesco Bosco (1784–1817) and Margherita Occhiena. He had two elder brothers, Antonio and Giuseppe (1813–1862). The Boscos of Becchi were farmhands of the Moglia Family. John Bosco was born into a time of great shortage and famine in the Piedmontese countryside, following the devastation wrought by the Napoleonic wars and a drought in 1817. When he was little more than two years old his father Francesco died, leaving the support of three boys to his mother, Margherita. She played a strong role in Bosco's formation and personality and was an early supporter of her son's ideals. In 1825, when he was nine, Bosco had the first of a series of dreams which would play an influential role in his outlook and work. This first dream "left a profound impression on him for the rest of his life", according to his own memoirs. Bosco apparently saw a multitude of very poor boys who play and blaspheme, and a man, who "appeared, nobly attired, with a manly and imposing bearing". The man said to him:
You will have to win these friends of yours not with blows, but with gentleness and kindness. So begin right now to show them that sin is ugly and virtue beautiful. When the traveling entertainers performed at a local feast in the nearby hills, John watched and studied the juggler's tricks and the acrobat's secrets. Then he would put on shows of his skills as a juggler, magician, and acrobat with prayers before and after the performance. Poverty prevented any serious attempt at schooling. John's early years were spent as a shepherd and he received his first instruction at the hands of the parish priest. It is suggested that the idea to become a priest came from his childhood experiences. At the time, being a priest was generally seen as a profession for the privileged classes, rather than farmers, although it was not unknown. Some biographers portray his older brother Antonio as the main obstacle for Bosco's ambition to study, protesting that John was just "a farmer like us!" On a cold morning in February 1827, John left his home and went to look for work as a farm servant. He was only 12 but life at home was unbearable on account of the continuous quarrels with Antonio. Having to face life by himself at such a young age may have developed his later sympathies to help abandoned boys. After begging unsuccessfully for work, Bosco ended up at the wine farm of Louis Moglia. However, although Bosco could pursue some studies by himself, he was unavailable to attend school for two more years. In 1830 he met Joseph Cafasso, an elderly priest who identified some natural talent and supported his first schooling. In 1835 he entered the seminary at Chieri and after six years of study was ordained a priest on the eve of Trinity Sunday by Archbishop Franzoni of Turin. Priesthood and first apostolate
Don Bosco
John Bosco began as the chaplain of the Rifugio ("Refuge"), a girls' boarding school founded in Turin by the Marchioness Giulia di Barolo, but he had many ministries on the side such as visiting prisoners, teaching catechism, and helping out at country parishes. Oratory of St. Francis de Sales
At that time the city of Turin had a population of 117,000 inhabitants and reflected the effects of the industrial revolution: the gathering of a great number of families below the poverty line in the slums of the city, coming in from the countryside in search of a better life. In visiting the prisons Don Bosco was disturbed to see so many boys, from 12 to 18 years of age, and determined to find a means to prevent them from ending up here. Because of population growth and migration to the city, Bosco found the traditional methods of parish ministry inefficient and that it was necessary to try another form of apostolate, meeting the boys in shops, offices, market places. They were pavers, stone-cutters, masons, plasterers who came from faraway places, he recalled in his brief Memoirs. The Oratorio was not simply a charitable institution, and its activities were not limited to Sundays. For Don Bosco, it became his permanent occupation and he looked for jobs for the ones who were unemployed. Some of the boys did not have sleeping quarters and slept under bridges or in bleak public dormitories. Twice he tried to provide lodgings in his house. The first time they stole the blankets; the second they even emptied the hay-loft. He did not give up. In May 1847, he gave shelter to a young boy from Valencia, in one of the three rooms he was renting out in the slums of Valdocco where he was living with his mother, and he and "Mamma Margherita" began taking in orphans. The boys sheltered by Don Bosco numbered 36 in 1852, 115 in 1854, 470 in 1860, and 600 in 1861, 800 being the maximum sometime later. Bosco and his oratory moved around town for several years and were turned out of several places in succession. After only two months based in the church of St. Martin, the entire neighborhood expressed its annoyance with the noise coming from the boys at play. A formal complaint was lodged against them with the municipality. Rumors also circulated that the meetings conducted by the priest with his boys were dangerous; their recreation could be turned into a revolution against the government. The group was evicted. Work with apprentices
In the archives of the Salesian Congregation are a contract of apprenticeship on ordinary paper, dated November 1851; another one on stamped paper costing 40 cents, dated February 8, 1852; and others with later dates. These are among the first contracts of apprenticeship to be found in Turin. All of them are signed by the employer, the apprentice, and Don Bosco. In those contracts, Don Bosco touched on many sensitive issues. Some employers made servants and scullery-boys of the apprentices. Don Bosco obliged them to employ them only in their acknowledged trade. Employers used to beat the boys. Don Bosco required of them that corrections be made only verbally. He cared for their health and demanded that they be given rest on feast days and that they be given an annual holiday. But in spite of all the efforts and contracts, the situation of the apprentices of the time remained difficult. One influential friend was the Piedmontese Justice Minister Urbano Rattazzi, who despite being anticlerical, nevertheless saw some value in Bosco’s work. While Rattazzi was pushing a bill through the Sardinian legislature to suppress religious orders, he advised Bosco on how to get around the law and found a religious order to keep the oratory going after its founder’s death. Bosco had been thinking about that problem, too, and had been slowly organizing his helpers into a loose "Congregation of St. Francis de Sales". He was also training select older boys for the priesthood. Another supporter of the religious order's idea was the reigning pope, Blessed Pius IX. Bosco disliked the ideals that had been exported by revolutionary France, calling Rousseau and Voltaire "two vicious leaders of incredulity", favoring an ultramontane view of politics that acknowledged the supreme authority of the pope. In 1854, when the Kingdom of Sardinia was about to pass a law suppressing monastic orders and confiscating ecclesiastical properties, Bosco reported a series of dreams about "great funerals at court", referring to politicians or members of the Savoy court. In November 1854, he sent a letter to King Victor Emmanuel II, admonishing him to oppose the confiscation of church property and suppression of the orders, but the King failed to respond. His actions, which had been described by Italian historian Roberto Petoia as having "manifest blackmailing intentions", ended only after the intervention of Prime Minister Camillo Benso, Count of Cavour. Despite such criticisms, the king's family did in fact suffer a number of deaths in a short period. From January to May 1855, the king's mother (age 54), wife (32), newborn son (Vittorio Emanuele, Count of Genoa; nearly four months old), and his only brother (32) all died. Opposition to Bosco and his work came from various quarters. Traditionalist clergy accused him of stealing a lot of young and old people away from their own parishes. Nationalist politicians (including some clergy) saw his several hundred young men as a recruiting ground for revolution. The Marquis de Cavour, chief of police in Turin, regarded the open-air catechisms as overtly political and a threat to the State and was highly suspicious of Bosco's support for the powers of the papacy. Bosco was interrogated on several occasions, but no charges were made. Closure may have been prevented by orders from the king that Bosco was not to be disturbed. Several attempts were also made on Bosco's life, including a near-stabbing, bludgeoning, and a shooting. Early biographers put this down to the growing influence of the Waldensians in opposition to the Catholic clergy. Foundation of the Salesians of Don Bosco
Basilica Don Bosco in Castelnuovo Don Bosco, Asti. John Bosco Parish Church, Philippines. Some of the boys helped by Don Bosco decided to do what he was doing, that is, to work in the service of abandoned boys. And this was the origin of the Salesian Congregation. Among the first members were Michael Rua, John Cagliero (who later became a Cardinal), and John Baptist Francesca. In 1859, Bosco selected the experienced priest Vittorio Alasonatti, 15 seminarians, and one high school boy and formed them into the "Society of St. Francis de Sales." This was the nucleus of the Salesians, the religious order that would carry on his work. When the group had their next meeting, they voted on the admission of Joseph Rossi as a lay member, the first Salesian brother. The Salesian Congregation was divided into priests, seminarians, and "coadjutors" (the lay brothers). Next, he worked with estuarine, Mary Mazzarello, and a group of girls in the hill town of Morse. In 1871, he founded a group of religious sisters to do for girls what the Salesians were doing for boys. They were called the "Daughters of Mary Help of Christians." In 1874, he founded yet another group, the "Salesian Cooperators." These mostly lay people who would work for young people like the Daughters and the Salesians but would not join a religious order. The first Salesians departed for the United States of America in 1875. After his ordination, Bosco himself would have become a missionary had not his director, Joseph Cafasso, opposed the idea. He nevertheless eagerly read the Italian edition of the Annals of the Propagation of the Faith and used this magazine to illustrate his Cattolico Provveduto (1853) and his Month of May booklets (1858). When Bosco founded the Salesian Society, the thought of the missions still obsessed him, though he completely lacked the financial means at that time. Bosco claimed he had another dream where he was on a vast plain, inhabited by primitive peoples, who spent their time hunting or fighting among themselves or against soldiers in European uniforms. Along came a band of missionaries, but they were all massacred. A second group appeared, which Bosco at once recognized as Salesians. Astonished, he witnessed an unexpected change when the fierce savages laid down their arms and listened to the missionaries. It seems the dream made a great impression on Bosco because he tried hard to identify the men and the country of the dream – and for three years collected information about different countries. A request from Argentina turned him towards the Indians of Patagonia, and a study of the people there convinced him that the country and its inhabitants were the ones he had seen in his dream. Towards the end of 1874, John Bosco received letters from the Argentine consul at Savona requesting that he accept an Italian parish in Buenos Aires and a school for boys at San Nicolas de Los Arroyos. Bosco regarded it as a sign of providence and started to prepare a mission. Adopting a way of evangelization that would not expose his missionaries to wild, "uncivilized" tribes, he proposed setting up bases in safe locations from which missionary efforts were to be launched. Negotiations started after Archbishop Aneiros of Buenos Aires had indicated that he would be glad to receive the Salesians. In a ceremony held on 29 January 1875, Bosco was able to convey the great news to the oratory. On 5 February he announced the fact in a circular letter to all Salesians asking volunteers to apply in writing. He proposed that the first missionary departure starts in October. There were many volunteers. Statue of San John Bosco, Ronda, Spain
Statue of San John Bosco, Makati City, Philippines. Preventive System
Bosco's capability to attract numerous boys and adult helpers were connected to his "Preventive System of Education". He believed education to be a "matter of the heart" and said that the boys must not only beloved but know that they are loved. He also pointed to three components of the Preventive System: reason, religion, and kindness. Music and games also went into the mix. Bosco gained a reputation early on for being a holy man and miracle worker. For this reason, Michael Rua, Giuseppe Buzzetti, Giovanni Cagliero, and several others chronicled his sayings and doings. These are preserved in the Salesian archives. Later on, they were combined into 77 scrapbooks with oral testimonies and Bosco’s own Memoirs of the Oratory. His aim was to write a detailed biography. This project eventually became a nineteen-volume enterprise, carried out by him and two other authors. These are the Biographical Memoirs. Death and legacy
Bosco died on 31 January 1888. His funeral was attended by thousands. Soon after there was popular demand to have him canonized. The Archdiocese of Turin was investigated and witnesses were called to determine if Bosco was worthy to be declared a saint. The Salesians, Daughters and Cooperators gave supportive testimonies. But many remembered Bosco’s controversies in the 1870s with Archbishop Gastaldi and some others high in the Church hierarchy thought him a loose cannon and a "wheeler-dealer". In the canonization process, testimony was heard about how he went around Gastaldi to get some of his men ordained and about their lack of academic preparation and ecclesiastical decorum. Political cartoons from the 1860s and later showed him shaking money from the pockets of old ladies or going off to America for the same purpose. These cartoons were not forgotten. Opponents of Bosco, including some cardinals, were in a position to block his canonization and many Salesians feared around 1925 that they would succeed. Pope Pius XI had known Bosco and pushed the cause forward. Bosco was declared blessed in 1929 and canonized on Easter Sunday of 1934 when he was given the title of "Father and Teacher of Youth".[34]
While Bosco had been popularly known as the patron saint of illusionists, on 30 January 2002, Silvio Mantelli petitioned Pope John Paul II to formally declare St. John Bosco the Patron of Stage Magicians. Catholic stage magicians who practice Gospel Magic venerate Bosco by offering free magic shows to underprivileged children on his feast day. Bosco's work was carried on by his early pupil, collaborator, and companion, Michael Rua, who was appointed rector major of the Salesian Society by Pope Leo XIII in 1888. See less