Don Bosco's Beatification and Canonization Story, Highlights and Sidelights
Don Bosco's Beatification and Canonization Story, Highlights and Sidelights Arthur J. Leoti, SDB Introduction I. Proposal and Aim on Bosco was beatified on June 2, 1929, and canonized on Easter Sunday, April I , 1934, by Pope Pius XI. Remembered today, sev D enty and sixty-five years later, those events, so glorious and epoch making for the Salesian Society, still stir the soul of every son and daughter of Don Bosco. To keep these anniversaries, a recounting of those events in the pages of this Journal seemed both timely and fitting. The story of Don Bosco's beatification and canonization has been told in detail by Don Bosco's biographer, Father Eugenio Ceria, in Volume XIX of the Biographical Memoirs. More recently the process of Don Bosco's canoniza tion has been critically investigated by one of the deans of Salesian scholar ship, Father Pietro Stella. My presentation will be based on these and other works, as well as on archival documents as need arises-as listed below1 My 1 Basic Literature and Archival Sources: Pietro Stella, Don Bosco nella storia della religiosita cattolica, Volume III: La Canonizzazione (1888-1934) (Roma: LAS, 1988). [Stella, DB III] Eugenio Ceria, Memorie biografiche di san Giovanni Bosco, vol. XIX: La glo rificazione (1888-1938) (Torino: SEI, 1939), 32-368. Ceria provides a detailed description of the processes of beatification and canonization. He either omits or softens their more nationalistic aspects. [Ceria, IBM XIX] Pietro Stella, "La canonizzazione di don Bosco tra fascismo e universalismo," in Don Bosco nella storia della cultura popolare, ed.
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