7 Sanctity No Elder than a Boy walking a tightrope in front of twenty cheering and very dirty boys, catching their attention by his strength and agility, and winning their hearts with his good humor and his love. Who was the first boy that Father John Bosco—Don Bosco, as they called him—saved from poverty and ignorance? One day he overheard his sacristan scolding a teenage boy, a ragged lad from the streets. He wanted the boy to serve Mass, but they boy said he didn’t know how to do it. “Then get lost!” hollered the sacristan, but Don Bosco interrupted. “Let me have the boy,” he said. The boy’s name was Bartolomeo Garelli. He was about sixteen. Did he know when to kneel at Mass and when to stand? He didn’t even know how to make the sign of the cross. Don Bosco taught him how, and made him promise to return the next day. The boy kept his promise, won over by the priest’s kindness. But he did more than keep his promise, just as Don Bosco was more than simply kind. Bartolomeo brought a couple of other boys with him. That is how Don Bosco’s ministry to the wayside youth of Turin began. If the boy had a home, Don Bosco would visit him there, and meet his mother and father and his brothers and sisters. If the boy wanted food, he got it for him. All the boys, just like the rest of us, needed the grace of God, so he took them to Mass and instructed them
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