Reaching the fifty milestone as the Province of Bombay is indeed a memorable moment! It is a time to look back with gratitude at all the graces and wonders of the past fifty years. A time to recapture the energy and excitement of the founding years of the province, so that the same eagerness and enthusiasm can drive us forward through the next fifty years. A time to celebrate Memory and Prophecy!
In May 1928, when the first Salesians arrived in Bombay to begin the first Salesian house in this city, Msgr. Louis Mathias penned these prophetic lines on the first page of the chronicle of that house: “In the name of the Father, the Son and of the Holy Spirit, for the glory of the venerable Don Bosco whom we hope to see soon on the glory of the altar and who in a famous dream saw his sons in Bombay… we start this chronicle with the blessing of Mary Help of Christians. This chronicle will tell the future generations the miracles which the celestial Madonna of Don Bosco will accomplish in this great city of India.” As we celebrate the Golden Jubilee of our province, we can testify that we have indeed seen miracles!
And so, as we celebrate our Golden Jubilee Year, ‘Memory’ is clearly the first aspect of our celebration – remembering with the deepest gratitude the pioneers and builders of our province. As the then provincial, Fr Tony D’Souza, wrote when we celebrated the Silver Jubilee of our Province: “Memory should wake up in us a greater appreciation of the efforts of the many Salesian missionaries to plant the Salesian charism in India, and in our provincial territory. The development of the province today is indeed a memorial to their success.”
As we celebrate ‘Memory’, we remember with much gratitude the pioneers of our province,
Fr Joseph Hauber, Fr Austin Dehlert, Cl William Haughey, and Cl Michael Devalle, the first Salesians who took up residence at Tardeo in 1928 and planted the Salesian charism in the western region of India. We recall with great affection and grand admiration, the patriarch of the Mumbai Province, Fr Aurelius Maschio, the man who worked tirelessly to set our province on an unshakable foundation. We remember with profound thanks, the many other pioneers and builders of our province: Fr Antonio Alessi, Fr Joseph Murphy, Fr Joseph Moja, Fr Mauro Casarotti, Br Ludvik Zabaret, Fr Dennis Duarte, Fr Thomas Braganza, Fr Cajetan Lobo, Br Thomas Puthur, and the many other giants, on whose shoulders we stand today.
Of the many ‘giants’’ our province has been blessed with, Fr Maschio easily stands out as the ‘tallest’ of them all. Fr Maschio arrived in Mumbai on 20 February 1937 to take over as rector of the only Salesian house in the city. The Superiors had handpicked him for this responsibility, since the Salesian work here was facing multiple crises and was on the brink of an inevitable closure. With firm faith, tremendous hard work, and prophetic vision, not only did he save the flickering flame from dying out, but he also energetically fuelled it into a roaring fire! From that single house at Tardeo, an entire province has come into being: a province to which we are today proud to belong!
As we look back with gratitude, we also look forward with determination and hope! And so, ‘Prophecy’ is the other component of our celebration. As a province, we need to read the signs of the times and walk the new paths that God is unfolding before us. In responding to the needs of today’s young people, not only will we stay relevant as a province; but as individual Salesians, we will find our life meaningful.
An important prophetic path that we need to tread as a province is re-focusing on the original mission of our Congregation – working for poor and abandoned young people. Our Rector Major, Fr Ángel Fernández Artime, has been consistently calling on the Congregation to reach out to the poorest and most abandoned young people. It is ironic that we seem to believe that work for the poorest and most abandoned children and youth is the responsibility only of our ‘YAR Centres’. As we celebrate the Golden Jubilee of our province, the first prophetic choice that we need to make is ensuring that every house in the province has a ‘YAR Focus’ and offers ‘YAR Services’. The Rector Major is very strong in his recommendation: “In every Salesian presence in the world and in every province, the necessary decisions must be taken so that the poorest children and young people in the places where we are present are never excluded from any Salesian house, whatever the effort to be made” (GC28 Post-Chapter Reflection, p. 38).
Our recent Provincial Chapters have already defined for us the YAR services that we need to offer. PC 2019 decided that “every community will begin at least one outreach program (livelihood/ skills training) for the youth at risk in their neighbourhood (youth in conflict with the law, migrant youth, youth addicted to substances, etc.)”. PC 2022 mandated that “all our schools must make their entire infrastructure and facilities available for the poorest, post-school hours”. Further, it has stipulated that “all our communities will initiate oratories or youth centres for the poorest and the neediest of their locality”. Implementing these prophetic decisions will enable our province to make a definite and visible shift towards serving the poorest young people in our neighbourhoods.
Importantly, focusing on the poorest and neediest young people should not imply ‘outsourcing’ this task to social workers or development professionals. It is about us Salesians being present among poor youth, personally involving ourselves in their lives. This is precisely the reason why PC 2022 decided that “every Salesian will visit the villages/ neighbourhood poorest, at least twice a week, if not more often”. As Pope Francis puts it, we should be “shepherds with the smell of the sheep”.
A second area that we need to seriously engage in, as we journey through the next fifty years, is social communications. We know that social communications and social media, particularly digital media, have a strong impact on young people. Over the recent years, we have seen a rapid evolution in social media platforms, and an equally rapid shift of young people from one platform to the next – from Facebook to Instagram and Snapchat, from pictures to reels, from being a communication tool to being an actual world in which they live. And the evolution has not stopped. We are now talking about the metaverse and an immense set of new possibilities that it offers.
In Christus Vivit, Pope Francis reminds us that young people today are “living in a highly digitalized culture that has had a profound impact on ideas of time and space, on our self-understanding, our understanding of others and the world, and our ability to communicate, learn, be informed and enter into relationship with others” (CV 86). The Pope also points out that “young people themselves know how best to find appealing ways to come together, they know how to organise events, sports competitions and ways to evangelise using social media, through text messages, songs, videos and other ways” (CV 210).The challenge for us Salesians is to engage more effectively with digital media – to connect with youngsters and particularly to use these platforms to effectively evangelise young people. The Rector Major in his Post GC 28 Reflection writes: “It is urgent that we accompany children, teenagers and older youth in their process of education to the faith, so that they may personally embrace the person of Christ”. With young people living in a “highly digitalized culture”, we need to learn how to accompany young people on their faith journey in the digital space.
A third area, where we need to be prophetic, is to understand the aspirations of poor youngsters, particularly in rural areas. Five decades ago, when our province was in its initial years, most poor children struggled to get a primary education and rarely made it to the secondary level. Today, with schooling being accessible even in remote villages, greater numbers of poor youngsters are completing the secondary and higher secondary school levels. And they are keen on getting a college education. I believe that’s where we would now need to focus our energies.
While our province is blessed with several secondary and higher secondary schools, we have just three institutions that offer under-graduate courses. Hence, building up this sector is clearly a necessity. Our last few Provincial Chapters have emphasised the need to work with older youth, those above 18 years of age. PC 2013 observed that “a majority of our works are for youth below 18 years”. Hence, it recommended that we “develop new models and strategies to interact with young people who are 18 years and above” and “accompany youth in the 18 years and above group as they search for a meaningful life”. One of the objectives that PC 2016 set for the province was: “Involve Salesians and other members of the Salesian Family in actively ministering to youth over 18 years”. As a concrete step towards working with older youth, PC 2019 decided that: “The Province will establish a skills training institute in a rural area which could eventually evolve into an institute of higher learning”.
Given the aspirations of poor young people, particularly in rural areas, to gain a college education, and the obvious fact that institutes of higher learning are an ideal setting to engage with older youth, ensuring the growth of the higher education sector in the province is another prophetic path we need to walk in the coming decades.
As we stand at this milestone that reads “50” – we look back with gratitude at the 50 that have been and we look forward with excitement at the 50 that are unfolding. Truly, a moment to celebrate ‘memory’ and to embrace ‘prophecy’!
Fr Savio is the Provincial of the Salesian Province of Bombay
