In that Salesian house, opened by Blessed Michael Rua in 1901, young Oratory boy Luigi Bolla in 1943 and 1944, at the ages of 11 and 12, heard the voice of Jesus (he was certain of it) telling him the plan: "You will be a missionary in the wilderness among the natives and you will carry my Word to them. You will walk a great deal in the wilderness...". Everything came true between 1953 and 2013.
Fr Farfán and his confreres met with the Rector of the Salesian house, Fr Ivan Ghidina, and the religious community at the oratory, then went on a brief visit to the industrial town, which had already been identified at the end of the 19th century as an ideal terrain for a Salesian work, due to the social and industrial situation resembling 19th-century Turin.
They thus got to know the oratory, the streets and industries in Schio, the cathedral where little Luigi received the first sacraments, his birthplace: the usual places of the future “Yánkuam”, so dear to them for his having initially worked in Ecuador with the Shuar natives.
The meeting with Fr Bolla's family was very moving: his brother Antonio, nephews, cousins, and the two “doyens” of the family, his sister-in-law Gianna, and his mother's cousin Giovanni, both in their nineties. They all had lunch together, exchanging memories that each of them carried in their hearts about the figure of the great missionary.
In the afternoon, the group visited the shrine of St Josephine Bakhita, the young Sudanese girl kidnapped and enslaved as a child at the age of seven, who later landed in Venice, became a Canossian Sister and lived from 1902 until her death in 1947 in the convent at Schio, where her mortal remains rest today. As a child, Luigi Bolla had known ‘Mother Moretta’, and would meet her gaze every morning while serving Mass in the Convent church: he would always remain devoted to Bakhita and make her known to his Achuar. This was the beginning of a still very close bond between the Salesians and the Canossian Sisters in Schio. Before returning, the Ecuadorian guests asked to go to the nearby cemetery, where they prayed at length at the tomb of Yánkuam's parents and brothers. A day of intense spirituality, in their own words.
The 6.30 p.m. weekday Mass, concelebrated at the place of little Luigi's “call”, concluded the day in a manner as intimately involving as it was surprising, alternating Italian and Spanish, hymns in Achuar and a homily by the young Indonesian Salesian in charge of caring for the Achuar of Ecuador, and celebrating in the traditional clothes of the people there. Almost a spiritual twinning which will not be forgotten in Schio.
