Argentine Provincial's Message on Bl. Ceferino Namuncura'

Fr. Dario Perera’s Message for the Memorial of Bl. Ceferino Namuncurá

(ANS - Buenos Aires – August 26, 2025) – August 26 is the liturgical memorial of Blessed Ceferino Namuncurá. On this day, which marks the 139th anniversary of the Blessed’s birth, Fr. Darío Perera, provincial in Buenos Aires, sent a message to the Salesian community, inviting them to “celebrate the feast of Blessed Ceferino, committing ourselves to realizing his dream.”

To this end, in the context of this year in which the Salesian Family celebrates the 150th anniversary of the arrival of the first Salesian missionary expedition to Argentina, sent by St. John Bosco in 1875, Fr. Perera proposes the question: “Who are we? What does the fact that our patron is Ceferino Namuncurá tell us about our identity?” And he invites us to look for the answers in two very significant features of the Blessed’s life.

“The first thing Ceferino tells us,” the provincial said, “concerns the choices made by the missionaries who introduced the Congregation to our land: the choice of the poorest young people. Ceferino is an example of youthful holiness, of those boys and girls who suffer, who are the result of a society that marginalizes people. In reality, Ceferino had to walk a complex and difficult path. We Salesians are here for the poorest young people. Ceferino shows us that his holiness is the fruit of the most complex and difficult contexts that can exist in our culture.”

Second, Fr. Perera continues: “The other element that Ceferino points us to has to do with that strong experience of God’s ministry of the original peoples. The mystery of God is not enclosed in a culture or in the West. It is very beautiful to discover that God was also waiting for us in the religious experience of the original peoples. Therefore, to our Salesian youth spirituality, Ceferino offers an extraordinary contribution, which we still need to deepen, that has to do precisely with this original experience of God’s being born in the context of his people.”

Fr. Perera then went on to say that, as a province, we cannot fail to reflect on the experience lived by Ceferino Namuncurá, who is at the very origin of the South Argentine Province and who today sustains it as its patron.

And to his Salesian confreres and to all the members of the Salesian Family, he wishes “that we may celebrate the feast of Ceferino by committing ourselves to realizing his dream.”

The video-message is available on the YouTube channel Don Bosco Sur, at the following link.