50 Facts About John Bosco

John Bosco developed teaching methods based on love rather than punishment, a method that became known as the Salesian Preventive System.

John Bosco later dedicated his works to de Sales when he founded the Salesians of Don Bosco, based in Turin.

John Bosco taught Dominic Savio, of whom he wrote a biography that helped the young boy be canonized.

John Bosco is one of the pioneers of mutual aid societies that were initiated as collaborative financial support to young migrant Catholic workers in the city of Turin.

On 18 April 1869, a year after the construction of the Basilica of Mary Help of Christians in Turin, John Bosco established the Association of Mary Help of Christians, connecting it with commitments easily fulfilled by most common people, to the spirituality and the mission of the Salesian Congregation.

John Bosco established a network of organizations and centres to carry on his work.

John Bosco was born on the evening of 16 August 1815 in the hillside hamlet of Becchi, Italy.

John Bosco was the youngest son of Francesco Bosco and Margherita Occhiena.

John Bosco had two older brothers, Antonio and Giuseppe.

When John Bosco was little more than two years old, his father died, which left the support of three boys to his mother.

John Bosco played a strong role in Bosco's formation and personality, and was an early supporter of her son's ideals.

In 1825, when he was nine, John Bosco had the first of a series of dreams that would play an influential role in his outlook and work.

In 1835, John Bosco entered the seminary at Chieri, next to the Church of the Immacolata Concezione.

John Bosco began to work with orphaned and abandoned boys, teaching them catechism and helping them find work.

John Bosco decided that it was necessary to try another form of apostolate, and he began to meet the boys where they worked and gathered in shops and marketplaces.

John Bosco did not give up, and in May 1847, he gave shelter to a young boy from Valencia in one of the three rooms he was renting in the slums of Valdocco, where he was living with his mother.

The boys sheltered by Don John Bosco numbered 36 in 1852,115 in 1854,470 in 1860, and 600 in 1861, reaching a maximum of 800 sometime later.

In those contracts, Don John Bosco touched on many sensitive issues.

Don John Bosco obliged them to agree to employ the boys only in their acknowledged trade.

Employers used to beat the boys, and Don John Bosco required them to agree that corrections be made only verbally.

John Bosco cared for their health and demanded that they be given rest on feast days and an annual holiday.

John Bosco was anticlerical in his politics but saw some value in Bosco's work.

John Bosco found a religious order to keep the oratory going after its founder's death.

John Bosco had been thinking about that problem too and had been slowly organizing his helpers into a loose Congregation of St Francis de Sales.

John Bosco was training select older boys for the priesthood.

John Bosco disliked the ideals that had been exported by Revolutionary France, as part of the process of dechristianization of France during the French Revolution, and called Rousseau and Voltaire "two vicious leaders of incredulity".

John Bosco favoured an ultramontane view of politics that acknowledged the supreme authority of the pope.

In 1854, when the Sardinia-Piedmont was about to pass a law suppressing monastic orders and confiscating ecclesiastical properties, John Bosco reported a series of dreams about "great funerals at court" that referred to politicians or members of the Savoy court.

In November 1854, John Bosco sent a letter to King Victor Emmanuel II and admonished him to oppose the confiscation of church property and suppression of the orders; the King failed to respond.

John Bosco was interrogated on several occasions; no charges were made.

Several attempts were made on John Bosco's life, including a near-stabbing, bludgeoning, and a shooting.

Some boys helped by Don John Bosco decided to do what he was doing: working in the service of abandoned boys.

In 1857 John Bosco drew up a set of rules for his helpers.

In 1859, John Bosco selected the experienced priest Vittorio Alasonatti, 15 seminarians, and one high school boy and formed them into the Society of St Francis de Sales.

John Bosco then worked with Mary Mazzarello and a group of girls in the hill town of Mornese.

When John Bosco founded the Salesian Society, the thought of the missions still obsessed him but completely lacked the financial means.

In late 1874, John Bosco received letters from the Argentine consul at Savona requesting that he accept an Italian parish in Buenos Aires and a school for boys at San Nicolas de Los Arroyos.

John Bosco regarded it as a sign of Providence and started to prepare a mission.

On 12 March 1877, John Bosco gave an opening address on the systems of education during the day for the opening of the St Peter's Youth Center in the new quarters of the Patronage de Saint Pierre in Nice in which he first mentioned the term "Preventive System".

John Bosco's preferred way to explain his educational approach was through educational novels and narrative pedagogy.

John Bosco was described as more of a man of action than a scholar, but wrote, adapted, and published many works on religion, history, catechesis and the Church.

John Bosco penned the 1881 A Compendium of Italian History from the Fall of the Roman Empire, which was translated and updated by John Daniel Morell and noted by scholars for its cultural importance on the knowledge base of ancient to modern civilization.

The Archdiocese of Turin investigated, and witnesses were called to determine if John Bosco was worthy to be declared a saint.

Pope Pius XI had known John Bosco and pushed the cause forward.

John Bosco had been popularly known as the patron saint of illusionists.

Catholic stage magicians who practice gospel magic venerate John Bosco by offering free magic shows to underprivileged children on his feast day.

John Bosco's work was carried on by an early pupil, collaborator, and companion, Michael Rua, who was appointed rector major of the Salesian Society by Pope Leo XIII in 1888.

John Bosco is the patron saint of Brasilia, which he supposedly foresaw in a dream concerning an extraordinary new civilization that would flourish in central Brazil.

John Bosco was the subject of the 1935 biopic Don John Bosco, directed by Goffredo Alessandrini, and was played by the actor Gian Paolo Rosmino.

An Italian church, San Giovanni John Bosco, is named after him in Montreal, Canada, in the Ville-Emard area.