The Number of Artisans Grows
Their Way of Life
Short Evening Exhortation
The Archbishop Grants Privileges
Retreats
In this year, political events and the public mood presented a drama, the outcome of which nobody could foresee. Charles Albert had granted the Constitution. Many thought that the Constitution also granted freedom to do good or evil at will. They based this assertion on the emancipation of the Jews and Protestants, claiming as a consequence that there was no longer any distinction between Catholics and those of other faiths. This was true in politics, but not in matters of religion.
Meantime, a kind of frenzy seized the minds even of youngsters; they would get together at various points in the city, in the streets and squares, believing that it was a praiseworthy to insult priests or religion. I was attacked many times at home and in the street.
One day as I was teaching catechism, a musket shot came through the window, passing through my cassock between my arm and my ribs, and making a large hole in the wall. On another occasion, a certain well-known character attacked me with a long knife in full daylight while I stood in the middle of a group of children. It was a miracle that I was able to get away, beating a hasty retreat to the safety of my room.
Dr Borrelli was also able to escape miraculously from a pistol shot, and from the blows of a knife one time when he was mistaken for someone else.
It was, therefore, quite difficult to control such aroused young people. In that perversion of thought and ideas, as soon as we could provide additional rooms, the number of artisans was increased, coming to fifteen, all amongst the most abandoned and endangered.
There was a big problem, however. Because we had no workshops in our institution yet, our pupils went to work and to school in Turin, with ensuing harm to morality. The companions they mixed with, the conversations they heard, and what they saw frustrated what was said to them and done for them at the Oratory. It was then that I began to give very short little sermons in the evening after prayers with a view to presenting or confirming some truth which might have been contradicted during the day.
What happened to the artisans was likewise to be lamented regarding the students. Because the most advanced scholars were divided into various classes, they had to be sent to Prof Joseph Bonzanino for grammar and to Prof Fr Matthew Picco for rhetoric. These were most distinguished schools, but going to and from was fraught with danger. In the year 1856, to everyone’s advantage, workshops and classes were permanently established at the Oratory itself.
At that time the perversion of ideas and actions seemed such that I could no longer trust the domestic staff. As a consequence my mother and I did all the housework. To my lot fell cooking, setting the table, sweeping, chopping firewood, cutting out and making trousers, shirts, jackets, towels, sheets, and doing the necessary mending. But these things turned out very advantageous, morally speaking, for I could conveniently give the boys some advice or a friendly word as I went round handing out bread, soup, or something else.
Discerning the need to have someone come and help me in both domestic and scholastic matters in the Oratory, I began to take some of the boys with me into the country and others to spend the holidays at Castelnuovo, my native country. Some of them came for dinner with me, others in the evening to read or write something – always with the purpose of providing an antidote to the poisonous opinions of the day. This was done with greater or lesser frequency from 1841 to 1848. I adopted every means to pursue also my own particular objective, which was to observe, get to know, and chose some individuals who had a suitable inclination to the common life, and to take them with me into my house.
With this same purpose, in that year (1848) I put it to a test with a little spiritual retreat. About fifty boys gathered at the Oratory house for it. They all ate with me; but because there were not enough beds for all, some had to sleep with their own families and return to the Oratory in the morning. This coming and going to their homes risked almost all the benefit to be reaped from the sermons and instructions which are customary on such occasions.
The retreat began on Sunday evening and finished on the following Saturday evening. It succeeded quite well. Many boys for whom I had laboured in vain for a long time really gave themselves to virtuous living. Several entered religious life; others, while continuing in the secular life, became models in their regular attendance at the Oratory. More will be said on this point in the History of the Salesian Society.
In that same year some parish priests, especially those of Borgo Dora, Our Lady of Mount Carmel Church, and St Augustine, complained anew to the archbishop because the sacraments were being administered in our oratories. When they did, the archbishop issued a decree giving us full faculties to prepare and present the children for Confirmation and Holy Communion and for them to fulfil their Easter duty in the oratories, as long as they came regularly. He renewed the faculty allowing us to hold every religious ceremony ordinarily held in parish churches. These churches, the archbishop said, will be parish churches for those young, abandoned strangers as long as they are resident in Turin.