SDB Generalate to Settle Permanently at Sacred Heart

SDB Generalate to Settle Permanently at the Sacred Heart Center in Rome

(ANS – Rome – December 18) – On December 17, Fr. Angel Fernandez Artime presented a letter that informed the Salesian Family worldwide of “an important decision that I have made together with the general council regarding the definitive placement of the Salesian headquarters, which will be at Sacred Heart.”

Fr. Fernandez informs the community at Sacred Heart on Dec. 17 

of the superiors' decision to keep Salesian HQ there.

Sacred Heart (Sacro Cuore) is a historical Salesian center known all over the Salesian world. At the specific request of Pope Leo XIII, Don Bosco built the church there in honor of the Sacred Heart of Jesus, and the Salesian house naturally founded adjacent to the church become the place where Don Bosco stayed when he was in Rome. It is where he wrote the famous letter of 1884 to young people, a letter of such weight that it’s published as an appendix to the SDB Constitutions. At the altar of Mary Help of Christians in the church Don Bosco wept repeatedly during the one Mass he celebrated there, remembering how God and the Virgin Mary had worked wonders in his life.

Sacred Heart, on via Marsala, is located in the heart of Rome, directly across the street from Stazione Termini, the city’s main rail and bus station.

In mid-2017 the Salesians relocated their general headquarters to Sacred Heart as a temporary measure from the large, free-standing complex at 1111 via della Pisana that had been their generalate since 1970. The decision to make Sacred Heart as the permanent seat of Salesian central government entailed an intense dialog with the Salesian province of Central Italy and the national center of the Italian Salesian provinces, both of which operated from this center. Their pastoral activities will be transferred elsewhere in the holy city by 2020.

Church of the Sacred Heart and the front 

of the rest of the Salesian complex on via della Marsala, Rome.

The Rector Major also said that the Generalate’s personnel will assume the pastoral services related to the Sacred Heart Basilica and care for young immigrants, and will maintain and service Don Bosco’s rooms, as part of special Salesian sites.

The Rector Major’s letter to the Salesians and the Salesian Family all over the world details the whole procedure that was followed in the maturation of this historic decision, its processes, and the timetable for completing the process of settling the headquarters.

From the time of the founding of the Society of St. Francis de Sales in 1859 its central headquarters remained at the motherhouse in Valdocco (Turin) until they relocated to the complex built in the far outskirts of Rome, on via della Pisana, specifically as the generalate. The superiors had been given to understand that the Roman suburbs were developing in that direction, but that prediction proved ill-founded, and no additional pastoral work was able to develop there other than a retreat and conference center (the Salesianum) attached to it. That entire building complex was given up last year in the face of a complex (in a different sense) legal situation, and the central government of the Society moved to Sacred Heart while studying where to settle permanently.