St.John Bosco
Artist: B. Emil
Date of Art:20.10.2012
EGC: Emil Group of Companies
Description: St.John Bosco Painting using poster colour
John Bosco was born in Becchi, a hillside hamlet near Castelnuovo, Piedmont, Italy, on the 16th of August in the year 1815. When John was barely two years old, his father died and left the support of three boys to the mother, Margaret Bosco. John’s early years were spent as a shepherd, and he received his first instruction at the hands of the parish priest. John possessed a ready wit and a retentive memory; and as years passed, his appetite for study grew stronger. Because of the poverty of the home, he was often obliged to turn from his books to the field; however, the desire for the religious training that he had given up never left him.
In 1835 he entered the seminary at Chieri. And after six years of study, on the eve of Trinity Sunday, Don Bosco was ordained priest by Archbishop Franzoni of Turin. Leaving the seminary, Don Bosco went to Turin where he entered zealously upon his priestly labors. It was here that the real field of charity that would be his calling until death opened up to him.
One of his duties was to accompany Don Cafasso upon his visits to the prisons of the city. The children who were confined in these places and abandoned to the most evil influences, with little before them but the gallows, made such an indelible impression upon Don Bosco’s mind that he resolved to devote his life to the rescue of these unfortunate outcasts.
On one occasion, when Don Bosco was vesting for Mass, he overheard the sacristan driving away a ragged urchin. Don called the young boy back to the church, and immediately a friendship was struck that would be the first of thousands for Don Bosco. Soon all of the young boys from the village knew that they could find a loving and trusting friend in the good priest. More and more young boys without homes began flocking to Don Bosco’s church; and in February of 1842, the “oratory” (as it had come to be called) numbered twenty boys. In March of the same year, the oratory numbered thirty; and in March of the year 1846, four hundred. Don Bosco soon had to find more room for all of these homeless boys and obtained one building after another in an effort to keep them off the street.
God called Don Bosco to Heaven on the 31st of January in the year of 1888. St. John Bosco’s incorrupt body lies in the Basilica of Mary Our Help, in Turin, Italy, next to the incorrupt body of St. Maria Mazzarello.
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