Speaking of Don Celi, his memory is almost immobilized in time. "On 5 January 1945 I went to see him. I was not really at peace and I said, 'Don Celi, it’s now 13 years'. He replied gruffly: 'Yes, years spent very badly!’. What did he mean by that? Did he mean that now that I had arrived at the age when I should start a serious examination of conscience? What I think is that Don Celi knew, and taught me, that a teacher must always cause a crisis for his pupils." No doubt, and despite what people think, Umberto Eco received a Salesian formation which pervaded his whole life.
This great thinker said that Don Bosco’s greatest achievement was the Oratory. "The oratory is Don Bosco’s greatest invention. Don Bosco invented it and then exported it to the network of parishes and Catholic Action, but the core is there. This brilliant reformer saw that industrial society required new ways of belonging, for young people first and then for adults, and he invented the Salesian oratory: a perfect machine for every communication channel, from games to music, from theatre to the press ".
Umberto Eco was born on 5 January 1932 in the city of Alessandria, in Piedmont, at the centre of the triangle between Genoa, Milan and Turin. As a child, he moved with his mother, Giovanna, to a small village in the hills of Piedmont, during the Second World War. That is where he met the Salesians.
Eco received a Salesian education and, despite his personal convictions, passed through Salesian circles. He was imbued with the methods of Don Bosco and the Salesians and always spoke of them with affection and gratitude. Rest in peace, Umberto Eco!
