Written by Redaktor Strony / June 14, 2024 / Salesian Bulletin Online

Following the Paths of the Heart 

 Don Bosco wept at the sight of the boys who ended up in prison. Yesterday, as is the case today, evil’s timetable is relentless: fortunately, so is the schedule for good. And even more so. I feel that yesterday’s roots are the same as today’s. Like yesterday, others today find a home on the streets and in prisons. I believe that the memory of the priest for so many boys without a parish is the irreplaceable thermometer for measuring the temperature of our educational intervention. 

Don Bosco lived at a time of striking social poverty. We were at the beginning of the process of large groups of youths coming together in the great industrial metropolises. The police authorities themselves denounced this danger: there were so many “young children brought up without principles of Religion, Honor, and Humanity, who were ending up rotting totally in hatred”, we read in the chronicles of the time. It was the growing poverty that drove a great multitude of adults and young people to live by expediency, and in particular by theft and from alms-giving. 

The urban decay caused social tensions to explode, which went hand in hand with political tensions; disorderly boys and misguided youth, towards the middle of the 19th century, drew public attention, shaking governmental sensibilities. 

Added to the social phenomenon was a clear lack of education. The breakdown of the family caused concern above all in the Church; the prevalence of the repressive system was at the root of growing youthful unease, and it affected the relationship between parents and children, educators, and those being educated. Don Bosco had to confront a system made up of “bad traits”, proposing loving kindness instead. 

The life of so many parents lived on the borders of illegality, the need to procure the necessities for survival, would lead a multitude of youngsters to be uprooted from their families, and to leave the place they lived in. The city became more and more crowded with boys and young adults on the hunt for a job; for many who come from afar there was also a lack of a corner to sleep in.

It as not uncommon to meet a lady, such as Maria G., begging, using children artfully placed at strategic points in the city or in front of church doors; often, parents themselves entrusted their children to beggars, who used them to arouse the pity of others and receive more money. It sounds like a photocopy of a tried and tested system in a large southern city: the renting out of other people’s children so the passer-by would take pity and begging become more profitable. 

However, theft was the real source of income: it was a phenomenon that grew and became unstoppable in 19th-century Turin. On 2 February 1845, nine young urchins aged between eleven and fourteen appeared before the police commissioner of the Vicariate, accused of having robbed a bookseller’s shop of numerous volumes … and various stationery items, using a picklock. The new breed of borsajuoli’ attracted constant complaints from the people. They were almost always abandoned children without parents, relatives, or means of subsistence, very poor, chased away, and abandoned by everyone who ended up stealing. 

The picture of juvenile deviance was impressive: delinquency and the state of abandonment of so many boys were spreading like wildfire. The growing number of “rascals,” “reckless purse-snatchers” in the streets and squares was, however, only one aspect of a widespread situation. The fragility of the family, strong economic malaise, and the constant and strong immigration from the countryside to the city fuelled a precarious situation that the political forces felt powerless to tackle. The malaise grew as crime organized itself and penetrated public structures. The first manifestations of violence by organized gangs began, acting with sudden and repeated acts of intimidation designed to create a climate of social, political, and religious tension. 

This was expressed by the gangs known as the cocche, which spread in various numbers, taking different names from the neighborhoods where they were based. Their sole purpose was “to disturb passers-by, mistreat them if they complained, commit obscene acts on women, and attack some isolated soldier or provost.” In reality, it was not a question of criminal associations, but more of gangs formed not only by people born in Turin but also by immigrants: young people aged between sixteen and thirty who used to gather in spontaneous meetings, especially in the evening hours, giving vent to their tensions and frustrations of the day. It was in this situation in the mid-19th century that Don Bosco’s activities were inserted. It was not the poor boys, friends, and childhood companions of his place at the Becchi in Castelnuovo, not the valiant young men of Chieri, but “the wolves, the squabblers, the unruly types” of his dreams.

It is in this world of political conflict, in this vineyard, where the sowing of darnel is abundant, among this market of young arms hired out for depravity, among these youngsters without love and malnourished in body and soul, that Don Bosco was called to work. The young priest listened and went out into the streets: he saw and was moved, but, as practical as he was, he rolled up his sleeves; those boys needed a school, education, catechism, and training for work. There was no time to waste. They were young: they needed to give meaning to their lives, they had a right to have time and means to study, to learn a trade, but also time and space to be happy, to play. 

(To be continued)