(ANS – Rome) – Punctual as every year, the Salesian Congregation – and with it the entire Salesian Family worldwide – awaits the end of June to joyfully and gratefully celebrate those who guide it with fatherly love and inspire it with foresight. This is what happens with Thanksgiving Day for the Rector Major, which generally takes place on 24 June, on the feast of St John the Baptist – Don Bosco’s name day. In this jubilee year 2025, therefore, there is great anticipation for this family moment: first of all in the Sacred Heart Community in Rome, but also spreading out in concentric circles throughout the globe, to the extreme missionary peripheries where the Salesian charism is alive Together with the traditional elements, however, there are also several new features this year.
Tradition
The Feast of Thanksgiving for the Rector Major is a traditional Salesian event celebrated to express gratitude to Don Bosco’s successor at the head of the Salesian Congregation. The feast always involves the General Council, the Salesian community at Headquarters, and many Salesians, members of the Salesian Family and lay people who cooperate in the mission. Its essential elements include a time of shared spirituality; an academic moment in which other confreres who are celebrating significant anniversaries of profession or ordination during the year are also honored; and a fraternal agape.
What’s new for the 2025 Thanksgiving Day
At the same time, this year’s edition brings with it several important new features. The first, most evident and significant is that, after 10 years of Ángel Fernández Artime’s term of officce, the baton will be passed on to the honored guest: for the first time, Fr Fabio Attard, 11th Successor of Don Bosco, elected Rector Major on 25 March by the General Chapter of the Salesian Congregation, will receive the tributes and good wishes of his confreres.
Secondly, for practical reasons, this year the feast will not be celebrated on the traditional day of the anniversary, but two days later, on Thursday 26th. In this way, it will practically coincide with the closing of the plenary session of the General Council and will, in a certain sense, serve as a viaticum for another important celebration, also eagerly awaited and widely participated in throughout the Salesian world: that of the Sacred Heart of Jesus, which this year falls on 27 June. It will also be an opportunity to officially and definitively celebrate the institutional inauguration, after three years of work, of the restored Salesian Sacred Heart Headquarters – the facilities comprising the General Council community, the large Salesian Basilica of the Sacred Heart of Jesus, built with no small effort by Don Bosco, and the central offices of the Salesian Congregation.
A celebration with a long past and an even longer future
The celebration planned for Fr Attard next Thursday will be the 155th of its kind: it arose spontaneously on 24 June 1870 with the expressions of gratitude of the first past pupils of the Oratory of Valdocco. Led by Carlo Gastini, they wanted to pay tribute to their Father, Teacher and Friend with all their affection, with gifts and symbolic gestures – such as the gift of a small set of coffee cups.
Today too, amid anticipation, planned celebrations and new developments, it stands out as the perfect opportunity to remember the importance of the Salesian charism for young people throughout the world, gathering around Don Bosco’ successor today and renewing with him our commitment to carry on the Salesian mission.
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