Salesian Formation Department
Salesian Youth Ministry Department

Dear confreres,
I am happy to present to you Young Salesians and Accompaniment: Orientations and Guidelines, promulgating it ad experimentum for a period of three years. While not being a supplement to our Ratio (Formation of Salesians of Don Bosco), it supersedes the Ratio in case of conflict. I am particularly happy to say that this document is the fruit of collaboration between the Formation and Youth Ministry departments of our Congregation. Spiritual accompaniment, as is becoming more and more clear to us, is central to both youth ministry and formation. At the request of the Rector Major and his Council, the two departments embarked on a fruitful collaboration that involved an extensive exercise of listening to young Salesians and to their spiritual guides. The two departments were, in fact, using the method of discernment that has been employed in the Synods on the family and the recently concluded Synod on Young People, the Faith and Vocation Discernment......

..... At the core of the document is the invitation to formators and spiritual guides to be truly and genuinely Salesian. Writing to you from the Basilica of the Sacro Cuore, I cannot but ask you to go back to Don Bosco’s Letter from Rome, and to make of the Preventive System our model of formation. Don Bosco said it beautifully: Strive to make yourselves loved! Our perpetual profession cross is a constant invitation and reminder to us of this central principle of Don Bosco’s system of education: Studia di farti amare!

The approach of the 400th anniversary of the death of our patron 13 St Francis de Sales is yet another invitation to us to recover the centrality of the heart in our charism and educative system, and to restore spiritual accompaniment to its proper place both in the pastoral proposal of Don Bosco and in the processes of formation of his Salesians.

[...read more in the PDF....]

Ángel Fernández Artime, SDB
Rector Major
Sacro Cuore – Rome, 15 August 2019