THE MESSAGE OF THE RECTOR MAJOR: Cardinal \u00c1ngel Fern\u00e1ndez Artime, SDB<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The art of being like Don Bosco: \u201cRemember that education is a matter of the heart, of which God alone is the master, and that we can achieve nothing unless God teaches us the art and hands us the key\u201d (The Bi<\/a><\/em>ographical Memoirs of Saint John Bosco<\/em><\/a>, <\/em>XVI, 376).<\/p>\n\n\n\n I\u2019m writing you this greeting, I\u2019d say, almost as a livestream, before it goes to print. I say this because I experienced the scene I\u2019m going to tell you about only four hours ago.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I recently arrived in Lubumbashi. For ten days prior, I\u2019d already visited very significant Salesian presences, such as the displaced and refugee population of PALABEK, Uganda. These people are living in much more humane conditions today than when they first came to us, thank God. From Uganda, I went to the region of Goma in the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo, a place struggling under a difficult situation. There, the Salesian presences are full of life. A number of times, I observed that my heart was \u201ctouched\u201d; that is, moved at seeing the good that\u2019s being done and that God\u2019s presence is so strong there, even in the midst of very great poverty. Still, my heart was touched with pain and sadness when I met some of the 32,000 people (mostly the elderly, women, and children) who have been welcomed and taken in on the grounds of the Salesian presence of Don Bosco-Gangi. I\u2019ll speak about this next time because I need to let it rest on my heart for a while.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Right now, I wish to refer only to one beautiful scene I witnessed on the flight that brought us to Lubumbashi. It was a non-commercial flight in a medium-sized plane. I didn\u2019t know the flight captain but the local Salesians did. When I greeted him on the plane, he told me that he\u2019d studied vocational training at our school here in Goma. He told me that those were years that changed his life, then added something else, speaking to me and to all of us: \u201cAnd here\u2019s someone who\u2019s been a \u2018father\u2019 for us.\u201d In African culture, when you say someone is \u201ca father,\u201d you\u2019re paying the greatest compliment possible. Not infrequently, though, this father is not the biological father to a son or daughter but the one who has really cared for him, supported him, and accompanied him.<\/p>\n\n\n\n This captain is a man about 45 years old; his son, already a young pilot, was accompanying him on the flight. To whom was he referring? To one of our Salesian coadjutor brothers, that is, not a priest but a consecrated layman, as Don Bosco conceived the Salesians. That Salesian brother, a missionary from Spain, Brother Honorato, has been a missionary in the Goma area for more than 40 years. Together with the other Salesians, of course, he did everything possible to make such a vocational training school\u2014as well as many other things\u2014a reality. He came to know the captain and some of his friends when they were just kids\u2014hundreds and hundreds of boys. In fact, the captain told me that four of his companions, who were practically street kids in those years, were able to study mechanics in Don Bosco\u2019s house and today are engineers in charge of the mechanical and technical maintenance of their company\u2019s small planes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Well, when I heard the captain, a former Salesian student, say that Brother Honorato had been his father, the father of all of them, I was deeply moved. It made me think of Don Bosco, whom his boys considered their father.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I thought, \u201cHow true it is that education is a thing of the heart.\u201d It just confirmed my conviction that our presence among boys, girls, and youths is, for us, almost a \u201csacrament\u201d through which we, too, reach God. That\u2019s why I\u2019ve spoken with such passion and conviction in recent years to my Salesian confreres and to the Salesian Family about the Salesian\u201csacrament of presence.\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n I know that in the Salesian world, in our Family throughout the world, among our brothers and sisters, there are many fathers and many mothers<\/em> who, with their presence and affection and their ability to educate, reach the hearts of young people, who need so much today. Indeed, I would say more and more that they need these presences that can change a life for the better.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Greetings from Africa\u2014and every blessing of the Lord to you, friends of the Salesian charism.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n Blessings,<\/p>\n\n\n\n Cardinal \u00c1ngel THE MESSAGE OF THE RECTOR MAJOR: Cardinal \u00c1ngel Fern\u00e1ndez Artime, SDB The art of being like Don Bosco: \u201cRemember that education is a matter of the heart, of which God alone is the master, and that we can achieve nothing unless God teaches us the art and hands us the key\u201d (The Biographical Memoirs of Saint John Bosco, XVI, 376). My dear friends, readers of … Continuar leyendo When an Educator Touches the Hearts of Children: The Art of Being Like Don Bosco<\/span><\/a><\/p>","protected":false},"author":10336596,"featured_media":12625,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_coblocks_attr":"","_coblocks_dimensions":"","_coblocks_responsive_height":"","_coblocks_accordion_ie_support":"","_crdt_document":"","advanced_seo_description":"","jetpack_seo_html_title":"","jetpack_seo_noindex":false,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":true,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[782003447,4639169,516714022],"tags":[35890],"class_list":["post-12547","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-rector-major","category-salesian-family","category-salesian-world-news","tag-featured"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/salesianbulletin.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/06\/pexels-photo-4262174.jpeg?fit=1880%2C1255&ssl=1","jetpack_likes_enabled":false,"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p59ePG-3gn","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/salesianbulletin.org\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12547","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/salesianbulletin.org\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/salesianbulletin.org\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/salesianbulletin.org\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/10336596"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/salesianbulletin.org\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12547"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/salesianbulletin.org\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12547\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12624,"href":"https:\/\/salesianbulletin.org\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12547\/revisions\/12624"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/salesianbulletin.org\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/12625"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/salesianbulletin.org\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12547"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/salesianbulletin.org\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12547"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/salesianbulletin.org\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12547"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
My dear friends, readers of the\u00a0Salesian\u00a0Bulletin<\/em>,\u00a0and friends of Don Bosco\u2019s charism,<\/p>\n\n\n\n
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