Hajja Salesjana November December 2017

10 A Troubled Childhood St John Bosco was born on August 16, 1815, in a small rural hamlet called Becchi, in the province of Asti, some sixteen miles from Turin, Italy. The odds against John started from his infancy. Four years prior to John’s birth in 1811, his father Francesco was widowed and he was left with a three-year-old boy, Antonio. A year later, in 1812, Francesco remarried. From his second marriage to Margherita Occhiena two sons were born, Giuseppe in 1813 and John, two years later. Francesco was a small farmer, who when possible, would help a neighbour to earn a few extra lire for the family budget. Tragically, Francesco caught a chill when he was only thirty-three and died of pneumonia. John Bosco was only two years old at the time. Francesco Bosco left the family in a precarious financial situation. John Bosco was not born a Saint By Rev. Dr. Louis Grech sdb PhD in Spiritual Companionship with the Young Note: My research will be largely based on John Bosco, Memoirs of the Oratory trans., Daniel Lyons, with commentary by E. Ceria, L. Castelvecchi and M. Mendl, ed. 2 (New Rochelle NY: Don Bosco Publications, 1989) and the extensive Biographical Memoirs of St John Bosco written in 19 volumes by Giovanni Battista Lemoyne, Angelo Amadei and Eugenio Ceria. (Written in 19 volumes, the Biographical Memoirs of St John Bosco were originally written in Italian during the period 1898-1939. The Italian edition in this research will be quoted as MB. The English translation was completed during the period 1965-2003. English translation will be referred to as EBM.) The Memoirs of the Oratory in Italian, English and Maltese