# The Venerable Don Bosco, the Apostle of Youth/Chapter XIX

CHAPTER XIX
TWO PICTURES. THE SALESIAN CO-OPERATORS
On the afternoon of Palm Sunday, April 5, 1846, Don Bosco was the prey of indescribable suffering. He stood on the side of a grassy hillock in the picturesque field near Valdocco, watching his four hundred boys playing their merry games for the last time within its pleasant borders. These dear children of his Festive Oratory had made a pilgrimage of a mile that morning to the Church of Our Lady of Campagna, for Mass and Communion, the rosary and the litanies replacing all the way the usual merriment; for today the Festive Oratory must come to an end, if no home, no playground could be secured for their happy Sundays and feast days. Easter Sunday would not bring joy to those four hundred little hearts. These grief-stricken hours of the watcher are feelingly portrayed by his eloquent and devoted son, Father Bonetti:
"The distress of the peasant who sees the hail storm destroy his only crop, of the shepherd who is forced to abandon his flock to the wolves, was nothing compared to his affliction; it was more than that of a father or mother constrained to leave their little ones forever. 'Those who have helped me,' he thought, 'have now turned their backs upon me and left me alone with these four ​hundred boys... and my Oratory must apparently come to an end this evening. Are all my labors, then, thrown to the wind? Have I toiled in vain? Must I disperse all these boys and bid them good-by forever? O my God! show us some place where we may go or tell me what I am to do!"
Even then the grievous trial was coming to an end, for at that moment a man leaped the fence and brought an offer of what was to prove a permanent place of meeting; it was the poor and dilapidated coach-house in the Valdocco field—Valdocco, now so famous for its wonderful history and the benefits conferred on the world by Don Bosco's Festive Oratories, educational institutes and industrial establishments, all diverging from that first modest Oratory.
From that Palm Sunday of 1846 to 1916 what an outgrowth, what a marvelous train of consequences, of prodigies, inconceivable to human thought! Look on this picture, then on that: Pinardi's shed converted into a pathetic chapel in a piece of meadow land, and today dispersed through the world behold two hundred and fifty flourishing "Don Bosco Institutes" with their churches and seminaries in Italy, and five hundred and twenty in other countries of Europe, North and South America, Australia, Africa and Asia, in which are gathered for religious instruction, secular education and training in the arts and sciences, trades and agriculture, nearly four hundred thousand children and youth of both ​sexes, the boys tutored by the Salesian Fathers, and the girls by the Salesian Sisters.
A question arises here: one is constrained to ask, Where did the human resources come from? We grant that Don Bosco was an instrument of miraculous power; but such stupendous works, the building of magnificent churches and basilicas, the construction and furnishing of immense groups of costly buildings, the support of thousands of professors and workmen and children, and the princely subsidies necessary for foreign missions—all this points to money—money unlimited, and ever at hand in the hour of need!
And the judgment is a correct one; there was and is such an inexhaustible treasury! and it is found in the great hearts and generous purses of the noble army of Salesian Co-operators—the Third Order of St. Francis of Sales—"the backbone of the whole spiritual enterprise of Don Bosco," as a Salesian author has styled this union of magnanimous collaborators of the Society during its activities of seventy years.
My readers will not be surprised to learn that this world-wide Society of Salesian Co-operators, now numbering hundreds of thousands of all ranks of society, had as lowly an origin as the First and Second Salesian Orders of Don Bosco. From the beginning of the Oratory numbers of Turin women gave their services to "Mamma Margaret" as co-workers for Don Bosco's children, willingly washing and mending their garments; ​and Don Bosco himself tells that when he picked up destitute boys on the streets of Turin "some kind ladies of rank charitably clothed these wretched youths, while rich young people interested in our work, sought employment for them in different manufactories and shops, and were successful in placing a great number." To all these earnest laborers united in the cause of charity for the glory of God, Don Bosco gave a prudent and pious rule of life, and obtained for them many spiritual privileges.
The saintly founder was pre-eminently an organizer; and as his works expanded bringing with them a great accumulation of expenditures, he drew together, by the magnetism of his words and personality, a multitude of men and women (anyone over sixteen was eligible for membership) and established the Society of Salesian Co-operators. The rule just alluded to was remodeled in order to meet the rising exigencies, and to aid more effectually in the sanctification of these new sons and daughters of Don Bosco. "To be Good in Themselves and to Do Good to Others"—this was the motto he inscribed in shining letters on the standard he raised before this solid phalanx of volunteers, this noble spiritual company of men and women of the world, when he formulated for them in 1858 the final code of rules.
"To be good according to the spirit of the Salesian Co-operators", declares the Cardinal Archbishop of Bologna, "is to be good according to the ​spirit of the Gospel, the spirit which attains its highest point in that great precept of Christ: 'Be ye perfect as your Heavenly Father is perfect'; and then to do good to others, embraces a mission in some sense apostolic…… Therefore, if the Salesian Co-operators exclude no work which concerns the material good, particularly of the working classes, and of the young, from the sphere of their activity; if, indeed, they seem to have for these a special impulse, the chief object must ever be the spiritual and moral elevation of the people, particularly of the most neglected, to make of them truly the people of God, to form of them the gens sancta, of whom the Holy Spirit speaks."
Don Bosco submitted the revised rule to Pope Pius IX in 1874. His Holiness not only gave the new society his approval and blessing, but graciously placed his own name at the head of the list of Co-operators, at the same time according to it all the indulgences granted to the Third Order of St. Francis of Assisi. Leo XIII was equally favorable to the new association, and claimed the honor of leading the names in this catalogue of Salesian benefactors. The male members were affiliated to the Society of St. Francis of Sales and the female associates to the Society of Mary, Help of Christians.
The Theatre of the Turin Oratory
View of the Church of Mary, Help of Christians, from Don Bosco's Room.