Saint Dominic Savio (1842-1857)

Birth and family at San Giovanni di Riva

Dominic Savio was born on April 2, 1842, at San Giovanni di Riva, a hamlet near Chieri, in the province of Turin.^[9][10] He was the second of ten children of Carlo Savio, a blacksmith and farrier originally from Mondonio, and Brigida Gaiato, a seamstress.^[11] The family was poor but deeply Christian, like so many rural Catholic households in Piedmont at the time.

From 1844, the Savio family lived at Morialdo, a hamlet of Castelnuovo d'Asti -- Don Bosco's own birthplace -- and then, in 1853, at Mondonio.^[12] Dominic therefore grew up only a few kilometres from the future founder of the Salesians, in the same Monferrato countryside that produced so many nineteenth-century priestly vocations.

First Communion at seven (April 8, 1849)

The most striking feature of Dominic's childhood was the precocity of his Eucharistic life. He received his First Communion at the age of seven, in 1849 -- a remarkable event for his time: at seven, "mentre allora era uso non farla prima dei dieci-dodici".^[13] Salesian tradition gives the date as April 8, 1849, Easter day.^[14]

Far from being a mere formality, that day became for the child a true covenant with God. Don Bosco reports that he wrote in his prayer book four resolutions which he would reread throughout his life:

"I will go to confession very often and receive Communion every time my confessor gives me permission. I will sanctify the feast days. My friends will be Jesus and Mary. Death rather than sin." — Dominic Savio, First Communion resolutions, reported by John Bosco, Life of the Young Dominic Savio, 1859^[15]

The fourth of these resolutions, "Death rather than sin" (La morte ma non peccati), became the motto of his whole life. In a child's formula, it expresses the absoluteness of a soul that places friendship with God above everything.^[16]

"There is good cloth in you"

On October 2, 1854, the first Monday of the month, Don Bosco was passing through the Becchi, near Murialdo, during one of his autumn journeys.^[17][18] Dominic, aged twelve, whom Don Cugliero had recommended to him, came to him with his father and asked to be admitted to the Oratory in Turin, where he hoped to study for the priesthood.^[19]

From that encounter came a dialogue that became emblematic of Salesian pedagogy:

"Ah! it seems to me there is good cloth here." — Don Bosco to Dominic Savio, October 2, 1854^[20]

"What use can this cloth be put to?" — Dominic Savio to Don Bosco, October 2, 1854^[21]

"To make a beautiful garment to offer to the Lord." — Don Bosco to Dominic Savio, October 2, 1854^[22]

The child replied at once, with a liveliness that delighted the priest:

"Then I am the cloth; you be the tailor: take me with you, and you will make a beautiful garment for the Lord." — Dominic Savio to Don Bosco, October 2, 1854^[23]

To test him further, Don Bosco then had him learn a page from the Letture Cattoliche; the boy repeated it word for word in barely eight minutes.^[24]

Entrance into the Oratory of Valdocco

Dominic entered the Oratory of Saint Francis de Sales at Valdocco, in Turin, on October 29, 1854.^[25] He lived there for less than three years, but those thirty months were enough to reveal a soul of rare spiritual maturity, under Don Bosco's gaze and in the fervent climate of the young Oratory, where the future cardinal Giovanni Cagliero and the future blessed Michele Rua were among his companions.^[26]

A few weeks after his entrance, on the evening of December 8, 1854, the day on which Rome proclaimed the dogma of the Immaculate Conception, Dominic consecrated himself to Mary before her altar: "Maria, vi dono il mio cuore…" ("Mary, I give you my heart…") -- a consecration taken up by the decree on the heroicity of his virtues (July 9, 1933) and recalled by Pius XII on June 12, 1954.^[27]

"Here holiness consists in being very cheerful"

Dominic Savio's great originality was that he sought perfection not in extraordinary penances -- Don Bosco even had to restrain his excesses of mortification -- but in joyful fidelity to the duties of each day.^[28] To his classmate Camillo Gavio, who was melancholy and worried, he gave the secret of the Oratory:

"Know that here we make holiness consist in being very cheerful. We try only to avoid sin, as a great enemy that robs us of God's grace and peace of heart, to fulfil our duties exactly, and to frequent the things of piety." — Dominic Savio, reported by John Bosco, Life of the Young Dominic Savio^[29]

This joy as a path of holiness is one of the master intuitions Don Bosco would hand on to the whole Salesian family. Cheerfulness is not the enemy of the interior life: it is its face.^[30]

Doing ordinary things extraordinarily well

Dominic's best-known saying condenses this spirituality of sanctified daily life. Of humble services -- polishing shoes, brushing clothes, serving the sick -- he would say, as Don Bosco reports:

"Let everyone do what he can," he would say: "I am not able to do great things, but what I can, I want to do for the greater glory of God; and I hope that God, in his infinite goodness, will accept these miserable offerings." — Dominic Savio, reported by John Bosco, Life of the Young Dominic Savio, chap. XVI^[31]

This way of spiritual childhood, which sanctifies what is small by doing it with great love, recalls the "little way" that Saint Therese of Lisieux would preach a few decades later: a simple reading proposed here, to place Dominic before the eyes of today's reader.

The Company of the Immaculate Conception (1856)

On June 8, 1856, nine months before his death, Dominic founded with a few companions -- among them Giuseppe Bongioanni, Giovanni Cagliero, Celestino Durando and Michele Rua -- the Company of the Immaculate Conception.^[32] He wrote its rule himself, marked by "strict obedience to superiors" and by service to the most difficult companions.

This small association of boys committed to supporting one another in piety and apostolate has remained famous in Salesian historiography as one of the first nuclei of the future Congregation: several of its members would become pillars of Don Bosco's work. An adolescent foundation that bore ecclesial fruit.^[33]

The apostle of his companions

Far from being a self-enclosed piety, Dominic's holiness was missionary in the middle of the playground. Don Bosco's Life reports several episodes in which the child intervened to prevent sin. The most famous is the duel with stones: two older boys, after a quarrel, were preparing to fight. Dominic placed himself between them, held up a crucifix, and told them to strike him first before killing one another under Christ's eyes. Ashamed, the two boys gave up and were reconciled.^[34]

As a direct witness, Don Bosco reports in his pupil mystical phenomena: he assures us that he reports only what he saw with his own eyes or what the pupils saw, and that he writes the truth scrupulously ("riferisco cose che ho vedute cogli occhi miei, assicuro che scrivo scrupolosamente la verità", chap. XX).^[35] Treccani soberly notes that Don Bosco observed in Dominic "signs of extraordinary charismatic gifts."^[36] The Church has not pronounced on these graces.

Ecstasies of thanksgiving

After Communion, Dominic sometimes remained absorbed in thanksgiving for several hours, to the point that someone had to call him back to his duties.^[37] These long silent prayers, joined to scrupulous attention to the presence of God, impressed his teachers as much as his companions.

The vision for England

The most famous episode among these graces is the vision for England. During a prolonged thanksgiving after Communion, Dominic told Don Bosco that he had seen a vast plain covered in mist and filled with crowds: England separated from Rome. He saw Pius IX carrying a torch -- the Catholic faith -- whose light gradually dispelled the fog.^[38]

Dominic urged Don Bosco to report this vision to the pope. The priest did so at an audience in 1858, the year after the boy's death. Pius IX answered him: "Questo mi conferma nel mio proposito di lavorare energicamente a favore dell'Inghilterra, a cui ho già rivolto le mie più vive sollecitudini. Tal racconto, se non altro, mi è come consiglio di un'anima buona." ("This confirms me in my resolve to work energetically for England, on which I have already turned my most lively solicitude. Such an account is to me, if nothing else, like the counsel of a good soul.").^[39]

From the summer of 1856, Dominic's health declined.^[40] Weakened by a pulmonary illness -- the sources hesitate between pleurisy and an early consumption -- he had to leave the Oratory on March 1, 1857, and return to his family at Mondonio in the hope of recovery.^[41] The repeated bloodletting prescribed by the doctor, according to the medical practice of the time, probably only worsened his condition.^[42]

He died on March 9, 1857, at fourteen, after receiving the last sacraments. His father, at his bedside, was reciting the prayers for the dying. According to Don Bosco's account, the child suddenly lit up and spoke his last words:

"Oh! what a beautiful thing I see!" — Dominic Savio, last words, March 9, 1857, reported by John Bosco^[43]

These words, in which tradition has seen the announcement of the beatific vision, deeply marked Don Bosco, who made them the summit of his biography. The peaceful death of this child became, throughout Salesian spirituality, the very type of the "good death" prepared by a life of grace.^[44]

All memory of Dominic Savio rests first on an exceptional primary source: the biography written by his own spiritual director, an eyewitness of his daily life. But Don Bosco also takes up in it the written accounts of Chaplain Zucca (chap. II), Don Allora (chap. V), Don Cugliero (chap. VI), Professor Picco and the letter of Dominic's father (chap. XXVI): he assures us that he reports only what he or the pupils saw, from preserved written testimonies (preface).^[45] To these sources are added the ordinary process of 1908 and the apostolic process of 1914.^[46]

"Life of the Young Dominic Savio, pupil of the Oratory of Saint Francis de Sales" -- this is the title of the booklet that Don Bosco published in January 1859, less than two years after the boy's death, in the Letture Cattoliche collection.^[47]

First printed by G. B. Paravia in Turin, the Life went through five editions revised by Don Bosco during his lifetime (1859, 1860, 1861, 1866 and 1878, the last overseen by Don Bosco), a sign of its immense popular success.^[48] It was reissued and annotated in the twentieth century by the Salesian Alberto Caviglia, then incorporated into the critical edition of the Fonti salesiane (p. 1026-1089).^[49]

The public facts (dates, places, foundation of the Company) are solidly attested; the mystical episodes are Don Bosco's testimony, which he guarantees as seen with his own eyes. The decree of July 9, 1933 declares the heroicity of his virtues; his beatification (1950) and then his canonization (1954) rest on miracles obtained after his death.^[50][51]

The objection: can a child be heroic?

Dominic Savio's process encountered a basic theological objection: canonization presupposes the exercise of virtues to a heroic degree. But how could a fourteen-year-old child have practised heroic virtue, which seems to require duration, trial and maturity? The examination was conducted with customary severity ("colla consueta severità"), in three congregations including a "Nuova Preparatoria".^[52] The cause, prepared by Cardinal Richelmy's inquiries (1908-1909) and introduced on February 11, 1914 by Pius X, made little progress after the latter's death ("la causa non fece grandi progressi").^[53]

The following table summarizes the official stages of this cause:

Pius XII's answer

The canonization took place on June 12, 1954, during the Marian Year marking the centenary of the dogma of the Immaculate Conception -- a coincidence dear to Salesian devotion.^[54] Dominic was canonized on the same day as other figures of the nineteenth-century Church, including the martyr Peter Chanel.^[55]

In his address given in Saint Peter's Square for the five saints of the day, Pius XII answered the objection from youth directly, making that very youth the miracle of grace:

"Behold, there appears before our eyes the image of Dominic Savio, a frail adolescent with a weak body, but with a soul stretched out in a pure oblation of self to the supremely delicate and demanding love of Christ." — Pius XII, address of June 12, 1954, Saint Peter's Square^[56]

The pope added that where one would expect, at so tender an age, merely good and amiable dispositions, one discovers instead "with astonishment the marvellous ways of the inspirations of grace."^[57] The decree of July 9, 1933 opens with the word of Wisdom: "consummatus in brevi, explevit tempora multa" ("having become perfect in a short while, he fulfilled long years," Wis 4:13); and on the same day, Pius XI explained this accomplished brevity by the purity, piety and apostolate of an adolescent "che non ha nessuno di quei grandi aiuti" ("who has none of those great helps").^[58] The same Pius XI, after the reading of the decree on the heroicity of the virtues, had spoken of his "little, or rather great pupil, Dominic Savio" ("il suo piccolo, anzi grande alunno") -- a formula that sums up the paradox of spiritual greatness housed in the body of a child.^[59]

Dominic Savio thus became the youngest non-martyr saint in the history of the Church, a status he kept until the canonization of the little Fatima visionaries, Francisco and Jacinta Marto, in 2017.^[60]

Patronages

His memory is fixed on March 9, the day of his death (1954 canonization formula; fact sheet of the Dicastery for the Causes of Saints); May 6 is the date proper to the Salesian Family and the dioceses of Piedmont, chosen to move out of Lent.^[61] Dominic is honored as patron of choristers and altar servers, of people falsely accused and of young offenders.^[62] Italian tradition also invokes him for the pueri cantores, altar servers and pregnant women.^[63] These patronages are rooted in his life: the calumny silently endured at the school of Mondonio (Life, chap. VI) and the episode of his mother's childbirth.^[64]

Almost twenty years after Dominic's death, Don Bosco reported to his pupils a dream ("sogno") in which his former student appeared to him in glory. He had it at Lanzo in the night of December 6, 1876 and recounted it at Valdocco on the evening of December 22: it is one of the most famous accounts in Salesian tradition.^[65]

Don Bosco describes Dominic clothed in a white tunic studded with diamonds, girded with a wide red band set with precious stones, crowned with roses, "so beautiful that he looked like an angel." When Don Bosco asked what had most consoled him at the hour of death, the child replied:

"What comforted me most was the assistance of the powerful and gracious Mother of the Savior, Mary most holy. Tell your young people not to forget to pray to her as long as they live." — Dominic Savio, dream reported by Don Bosco, Lanzo, 1876^[66]

Like the ecstasies and the vision for England, this account is Don Bosco's testimony. But it admirably expresses the heart of Savian spirituality: an ardent Marian devotion, sealed on the day of First Communion by the choice of Jesus and Mary as his only friends.^[67]

• Saint John Bosco (1815-1888) — Dominic's master, spiritual director and biographer, founder of the Salesians.
• Saint Joseph Cafasso (1811-1860) — the Turin priest who formed Don Bosco, another saint of nineteenth-century Piedmont.
• Saint Therese of Lisieux (1873-1897) — the "little way" of spiritual childhood, to be set alongside Dominic's spirituality.
• The dogma of the Immaculate Conception (1854) — proclaimed the very year Dominic entered Valdocco, at the heart of his Marian devotion.
• Saint Peter Chanel (1803-1841) — martyr canonized on the same day as Dominic Savio, June 12, 1954.
• Pius IX (1792-1878) — the pope of the vision for England and of the proclamation of the Immaculate Conception.