{"id":19981,"date":"2025-04-04T20:41:42","date_gmt":"2025-04-05T03:41:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/salesianbulletin.org\/?p=19981"},"modified":"2025-04-22T19:02:05","modified_gmt":"2025-04-23T02:02:05","slug":"fr-attard-why-i-start-from-the-ferrante-aporti-juvenile-prison","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/salesianbulletin.org\/es\/2025\/04\/04\/fr-attard-why-i-start-from-the-ferrante-aporti-juvenile-prison\/","title":{"rendered":"Fr Attard: ‘Why I Start From the Ferrante Aporti Juvenile Prison\u201d"},"content":{"rendered":"

(ANS – Turin)<\/strong> \u2013 For his first public meeting, the new Rector Major of the Salesians, Fr. Fabio Attard, chose the Ferrante Aporti juvenile prison in Turin. On Thursday, April 3, he visited the incarcerated youth at Corso Unione Sovietica. Behind juvenile delinquency, the Salesians of Don Bosco see the suffering of poor and abandoned young people.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cPassionate for Jesus Christ, dedicated to the young. For a faithful and prophetic experience of our Salesian vocation.\u201d This is the theme of the 29th General Chapter of the Salesians, currently being held at the Mother House in Valdocco. Approximately 220 chapter members, representing the 136 nations where the Sons of Don Bosco are present, elected the new Rector Major, Fr. Fabio Attard, on Wednesday, March 25. In harmony with the Jubilee of Hope and the 2025 Strenna, \u201cAnchored in Hope, Pilgrims with the Young,\u201d<\/em> he decided to meet first the \u201cnaughty and struggling youth,\u201d as Don Bosco called them, \u201cand whom today he would go out to find.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

On the morning of Thursday, April 3, Fr. Attard went to the Ferrante Aporti juvenile detention center in Turin to meet the detained boys, most of whom are foreigners, accompanied by his fellow Salesian chaplain, Fr. Silvano Oni.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThis is where Don Bosco\u2019s Preventive System was born,\u201d Fr. Attard explains, \u201cand from Turin, where the Salesian charism was born, we want to continue standing beside young people who have received less, because, as our founder recommended, \u2018in every young person, even the most unfortunate, there is an accessible point of goodness, and the first duty of the educator is to find this point, this sensitive chord of the heart, and make use of it.\u2019<\/em>\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It is precisely the Saint of the Youth, the Rector Major recalls, who in his \u201cMemoirs of the Oratory\u201d<\/em> recounts how he understood that \u2013 in 19th-century Turin, with many similarities to today’s global peripheries \u2013 it was necessary to give hope to the most vulnerable and poorest young people. \u201cTo see crowds of boys, aged 12 to 18, all healthy, robust, and bright, but to see them there idle, tormented by insects, starving for both spiritual and material bread, was something that horrified me,\u201d Don Bosco wrote.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWho knows,\u201d I thought to myself, \u201cif these boys had a friend outside who cared for them, assisted them, and instructed them in religion on feast days, who knows if they might stay away from ruin or at least reduce the number of those who return to prison? I shared this thought with Fr. Cafasso (his spiritual father, patron of prisoners, and confessor of those condemned to death, Ed.), and with his advice and guidance, I began to study ways to make it happen.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It was 1855 at the \u201cGenerala\u201d (as the juvenile prison in Turin was then called, now \u201cFerrante Aporti\u201d): here Don Bosco visited the detained boys. From those afternoons spent playing and chatting with them, he invented the Preventive System, as a plaque dedicated to him in the corridors of the institution recalls.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For this reason, since then, the chaplains of the \u201cFerrante\u201d have been Salesians, and they strive, following in Don Bosco\u2019s footsteps, as happens in all Salesian oratories worldwide, to love the youth: \u201cmore can be obtained with a glance of charity and a word of encouragement than with many reprimands,\u201d<\/em> the saint wrote. After all, Fr. Attard concludes, \u201cPope Francis, by opening the second Holy Door after St. Peter\u2019s Basilica at the Rebibbia prison, has shown us where we must bring hope and consolation.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Marina Lomunno<\/em>
<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Fuente: La Voce e Il Tempo<\/a><\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

(ANS – Turin) \u2013 For his first public meeting, the new Rector Major of the Salesians, Fr. Fabio Attard, chose the Ferrante Aporti juvenile prison in Turin. On Thursday, April 3, he visited the incarcerated youth at Corso Unione Sovietica. Behind juvenile delinquency, the Salesians of Don Bosco see the suffering of poor and abandoned young people. \u201cPassionate for Jesus Christ, dedicated to the young. For … Continuar leyendo Fr Attard: ‘Why I Start From the Ferrante Aporti Juvenile Prison\u201d<\/span><\/a><\/p>","protected":false},"author":10336596,"featured_media":19998,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_coblocks_attr":"","_coblocks_dimensions":"","_coblocks_responsive_height":"","_coblocks_accordion_ie_support":"","advanced_seo_description":"","jetpack_seo_html_title":"","jetpack_seo_noindex":false,"jetpack_seo_schema_type":"","_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":true,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_wpcom_ai_launchpad_first_post":false,"_jetpack_hide_featured_image":false,"_jetpack_featured_image_duplicate_dismissed":0,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[782003447,516714022],"tags":[35890],"class_list":["post-19981","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-rector-major","category-salesian-world-news","tag-featured"],"jetpack_likes_enabled":false,"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p59ePG-5ch","jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/salesianbulletin.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/04\/5c08d8dba7cd2aa4b56896e6b8effb2f_xl-2.jpg?fit=1024%2C683&ssl=1","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/salesianbulletin.org\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19981","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=19981"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/salesianbulletin.org\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19981\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":19985,"href":"https:\/\/salesianbulletin.org\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19981\/revisions\/19985"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/salesianbulletin.org\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/19998"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/salesianbulletin.org\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19981"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/salesianbulletin.org\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=19981"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/salesianbulletin.org\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=19981"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}