Rector Major Thanks Cardinal Angelo Amato

Rector Major Thanks Cardinal Angelo Amato

(ANS - Vatican City – July 23) – On Friday, July 20, Rector Major Fr. Angel Fernandez Artime, accompanied by Fr. Pierluigi Cameroni, postulator general, met Cardinal Angelo Amato, SDB, prefect of the Congregation for Saints’ Causes, at the dicastery’s offices. Cardinal Amato’s term of office ends on August 31.

Fr. Angel Fernandez Artime and Cardinal Angelo Amato

In a very friendly setting, the Rector Major expressed thanks to Cardinal Amato from the Salesian Congregation and the Salesian Family for the service he has been doing with passion and generosity for the past ten years. More specifically, he spoke of the increased awareness in the Salesian Family of the patrimony of holiness that flourishes through Don Bosco’s charism.

For his part, the cardinal recalled the pastoral value that the causes of beatification and canonization represent for the Church and for a religious family like ours, recalling how Don Bosco was not afraid to present the high goal of holiness to young people, offering concrete models who had grown up in the Oratory at Valdocco. In particular, the deepening of the spiritual experience of the eminent members of our Family is a decisive element for understanding and developing the mission. In fact, in them we find our charism expressed in its most genuine form and its finest implementation, whether we’re speaking of the following of Jesus Christ and of educational and pastoral action.

Don Bosco, in fact, was not only personally a great saint, but he was also an exceptional teacher of holiness, proposing it to his boys as a joyful and accessible lifestyle and making it almost “breathe” in the environment of Valdocco. In Don Bosco these two aspects – personal holiness and commitment to educating young people to holiness – have been one single entity; nor can they can exist for us without each other.