Address of POPE JOHN PAUL II to the members of the GC24 received in audience in the Clementine Hall.

1 April 1996

Dear Capitulars

of the Salesian Society

of St. John Bosco,

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I am very pleased to have this long-awaited meeting with you, representatives of the Salesians spread throughout the world. Attending in such numbers, you witness to the marvelous expansion of the work of St. John Bosco, whose charism remains living and vital in the contemporary world.

First of all, sharing in your joy, I congratulate the Rector Major, Fr. Juan Edmundo Vecchi, whom you have elected to take charge of your spiritual family, calling him to succeed the late Fr. Egidio Vigaṇ, so distinguished for the work he carried out with such clear thinking, totally dedicated to the good of the Church and the Institute. I pray the Lord to accompany the new Rector Major and his collaborators in their important task, so that they may lead the Salesian Society and Family into the new millennium with St. John Bosco's apostolic zeal and all the freshness of his charism.

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2. With this view of the future and with the challenges of the contemporary world before my eyes, I would like first of all to express my grateful appreciation of your family's active and faithful participation in the Church's mission. You consider yourselves a living part of the ecclesial community, fully integrated in it and entirely at its service in the various parts of the world.

In the footsteps of your founder, who passed this "sensus Ecclesiae" on to you as a precious heritage, you are carrying out your mission in an extraordinarily important area: the education of youth, "the most delicate and precious part of human society", as Don Bosco said. In the Letter Iuvenum Patris which I sent you on the occasion of the centenary of the saint's death, I reminded you that "the Church has (...) an intense love for young people: always, but especially in this period so close to the year 2000, she feels invited by her Lord to look upon them with a special love and hope, and to consider their education as one of her primary pastoral responsibilities" (Oss. Rom., English edition, 8 February 1988, p.1). I therefore urge you to persevere in this noble and sensitive task which is certainly the focus of your Chapter's attention, since - as your Constitutions state - "like Don Bosco, you are all called on every occasion to be teachers of the faith" (n.34).

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3. To fulfill this mission, your Chapter devoted special attention to the laity who, in your family, have various roles in the education of the young. Don Bosco himself understood the importance of having collaborators who were prepared to help him in different ways with his great educational task and who shared with him the principles and practices of his preventive system. He also understood the importance of having people who shared the Congregation's spirit more deeply, bringing it into the Church and society. This is why he founded the Association of Salesian Cooperators, associated with the Society of St. Francis de Sales, with the precise aim of cooperating in its mission to save young people. He considered it "a most important association which is the soul of our Congregation" (From the Minutes of the First General Chapter). In addition to the Cooperators, many other lay people, more or less closely connected with the Congregation, have joined forces in the vast undertaking of education and evangelization: alumni, parents, friends and benefactors, volunteer workers, men and women of good will, all united in the love and service of youth.

Continuing on the path marked out by St. John Bosco and attentive to the signs of the Church of our time, especially in the light of the Second Vatican Council and the Apostolic Exhortation Christifideles laici, you desire to give new impetus to your involvement with lay people, growing with them in the communion and sharing of Don Bosco's spirit and mission. This is certainly a theme directed to the future in the context of the new evangelization, which will help the Congregation and the entire Salesian family to enter the third millennium, now at our door, with numerous effective forces.

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4. In this perspective, in your Chapter you proposed the objective of widening involvement and promoting participation and shared responsibility. Yes, this really is the way to go if all the forces of good are to be joined in active collaboration, in which each, according to his own specific vocation - priestly, religious or lay - contributes his own riches, in a mutual exchange of gifts for the fulfilment of the educational mission.

For my part, I would like to stress the demanding task of formation which, in the Exhortation Christifideles laici, I presented as a fundamental aspect of the life and mission of the lay faithful, as "the call to growth, and a continual process of maturation, of always bearing much fruit" (n.57). On the one hand, it is necessary to remember that formation is a task that involves everyone together, because it is mutually received and shared - and this is all the more true in a spiritual family where participation in the same charism and collaboration in the same mission require putting shared formation into action. On the other hand, however, it is also necessary to stress the precise responsibility incumbent on the ones who, through a special gift of the Spirit, are called to educate those who are responsible for formation. This is a demanding task for you, sons of St. John Bosco: to help form your lay people as teachers of youth, in the spirit of St. John Bosco's preventive system.

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5. As I reminded you in my opening Message at the beginning of your Chapter, a crucial point in this formative commitment is the spiritual programme which stems from Don Bosco's experience at Valdocco. It is at the same time the source and goal of the way offered to all those - young people and adults - who share the saint's educational method. Allow me to insist here on the primacy of this spirituality which permeates your life and mission and must shine forth particularly in your testimony as consecrated apostles, the "signs and bearers of God's love for the young" as your Constitutions state (n.2). Lay people, who share with you the spirit and mission of the Salesian experience, cannot but feel a similar need in the task they are called to carry out as teachers. As gradually as necessary and respecting the faith convictions of each, you are called to help them grow towards ever loftier goals in the discovery of their own vocation, to the point of introducing them into the ways of the Spirit of the Lord.

In the Letter Iuvenum Patris I pointed out how, in the figure of Don Bosco, there is an admirable interchange between education and holiness: "He realized his personal holiness", I wrote ~through an educative commitment lived with zeal and an apostolic heart and (...) at the same time, he knew how to propose holiness as the practical objective of his pedagogy" (n.5). Dear Salesians, I hope you will be able to imitate Don Bosco in his ability to transmit Gospel values, involving your collaborators in the educational mission and the young people themselves to whom it is directed. Thus you will succeed in making the educational community a true experience of the Church, the appropriate environment for a journey of growth towards authentic Christian maturity.

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6. Holy Week, which has just begun calls to mind the Message that your beloved Rector Major, Fr. Egidio Vigaṇ, addressed to the Salesian Family last year precisely at this time. On Good Friday, 14 April, he wrote: "I feel especially close to you on this sacred day of mystery and sacrifice. I have been in hospital for weeks, but I had never experienced Good Friday as an extraordinary day of Don Bosco's charism. To be immersed in the mystery of Christ's love, overwhelmed by the sufferings of the flesh: there is no more suitable moment to be with young people, to encourage our brothers and sisters, to intensify the Salesian Family". With these sentiments Fr. Vigaṇ offered everyone his Easter greetings "in the victorious Lord".

Dear Capitulars, I invite you to look to this splendid witness of faith and Christian optimism, in order to draw from it inspiration and courage in the decisions you are called to make. The lesson left you by Fr. Vigaṇ is quite clear: the secret of courageous and fruitful apostolic activity lies in adhering without reserve to the crucified and risen Christ.

I invoke upon all of you the heavenly protection of Mary Help of Christians. May she be for you, as she was for Don Bosco, a teacher and guide in your mission as educators.

I impart my heartfelt Apostolic Blessing to you, to your confreres, to the lay members of your educative communities and to all the members of the Salesian Family.