Italy - Feast of Salesian Family of Lazio, amidst holiness and extraordinary generosity

21 January 2019

(ANS - Rome) - The Feast of the Salesian Family of Lazio, celebrated yesterday, Sunday, January 20, at the "Don Bosco Theater" of Cinecittà in Rome, saw a large number of participants rediscover, thanks to the theater, the figure of the Saint of Youth. The Rector Major, Fr Ángel Fernández Artime, also intervened, calling attention to the possibility of holiness for all and a gesture of extraordinary generosity.

by Aurelio Marinelli, SDB

The nuclei of the festive afternoon was the show that Laura Curino and Simone Derai presented, a tale narrating the intelligence and the spirit able to transform extraordinary men into "social saints", in the Piedmont of the 19th century.

Also present at the feast was Fr Ángel Fernández Artime, Rector Major of the Salesians, who thanked the theatrical company for having shown the reality of the Salesian charism born at the Pinardi home.

"The trail of Piedmontese holiness," said Fr Á.F. Artime, "found in Valdocco a fertile soil, which made great figures of holiness directly or indirectly linked to our Family flourish."

The Rector Major then said that a few days after Christmas, greetings from Uganda arrived from a Salesian of the Salesian headquarters who'd visited two presences of the Congregation among the poorest youth, one in Palabek, which hosts about 42 thousand refugees.

"A year ago, on the feast day of Don Bosco," the Rector Major continued, "we opened a presence with a small community. Without houses, without church, in the middle of the refugee camp, with the people of the camp. I received from this confrere two envelopes with offers for me, with the commitment to donate them to the needy young people. I felt a great emotion: they, the poorest of the poor, who put aside a small amount of money for people in need like them. I wanted to tell you this because it is precisely the story that today, through this representation, you have told all of us. This is a sign of Don Bosco who wants to remind us that the human heart is the most precious and generous reality that exists in the world."

Fr Artime greeted those present, saying that the next morning he would be leaving for Panama to participate in the WYD and the great events planned for the feast of Don Bosco.

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ANS - “Agenzia iNfo Salesiana” is a on-line almost daily publication, the communication agency of the Salesian Congregation enrolled in the Press Register of the Tibunal of Rome as n 153/2007.

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