| IN THE COURTYARD BESIDE THE BASILICA |
On the second Sunday of Lent, 15th March 1846, Don Bosco with 300 boys of his Oratory was dismissed by the Filippi brothers. He found himself on their land (to the south-east, 300 metres from here).
He looked at his youngsters and, did not know where to tell them to meet the next Sunday, having all been sent packing. That evening -he wrote - the crowd of youngsters stayed there playing. I was alone, exhausted with my health in bad shape. I drew myself aside and started walking alone unable to hold back the tears.
"Oh God" I cried, "tell me what I must do".
At that moment
it wasn't an archangel that appeared, but a stammering small
man, Pancrazio Soave. He asked, "Is it true that you are
looking for a place to set up a workshop?". "No, I want to start
an Oratory".
"I don't know what the difference is, but in any case there
is a place. It belongs to Mr Pinardi, come and have a look".Don
Bosco crossed these three hundred metres diagonally (from south-east
to north-west, following the road that was then called "Gardener's
Road") and found himself facing a modest little house with
a ground and first floor.
Pinardi showed him a roofed cabin behind the house. It is still
there today snuggled in, behind the buildings - a small dark
stump from which developed all the work of Don Bosco. Now, there
is written, "Pinardi
Chapel",
but then it was only a room used by the city's washerwomen as
a store for the heaps of linen they had to wash, before it wash
laid out on the grass like large white festoons.
In the picture
above one sees the Pinardi house in a fresco by the painter Crida.
This
will become the centre of all the Salesian work carried out throughout
the world.
| THE PINARDI CHAPEL |
Mr Pinardi let
Don Bosco enter the cabin through the rear door (closed now by
the large tablets in the background) He said: "Is this
enough for your workshop?".
| And Don Bosco replied, "But I want to start an Oratory, a tiny church where I can bring my youngsters to pray". Meanwhile he looked around. It was only a poor cabin, low and resting against the north side of the Pinardi house. A wall all round it transformed it into a sort of shed or tiny room. It measured 15 x 6m. Don Bosco said, "It's too low, I can't use it". But Pinardi replied, "I'll lower the floor by half a metre, make a wood floor, put in a door and windows and you'll have a church". Don Bosco paid |
|
300 lire for a year for the cabin and the strip of land that surrounded it where his youngsters could play. He ran back to the children and shouted:
"Cheer up! We've found our Oratory!
At Easter we'll go. It's there in Mr Pinardi's house!"
VISIT Nr.