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  • Don Bosco, His Pope and His Bishop. The Trials of a Founder
  • Roy Domenico
Don Bosco, His Pope and His Bishop. The Trials of a Founder. By Arthur J. Lenti, S.D.B. [Centro studi Don Bosco: Studi Storici—15.] (Rome: LAS [Libreria Ateneo Salesiano]. 2006. Pp. 251. €15 paperback.)

Arthur J. Lenti teaches at the Institute of Salesian Spirituality in Berkeley, California. His impressively researched book, Don Bosco, His Pope and His Bishop is a study of Saint Giovanni Bosco (1815-1888), the founder of the Salesian Order and a key figure in Catholicism's approach to poverty and industrialization in the mid-nineteenth century. Don Bosco struggled to save impoverished boys from the streets, first in Turin, and launched his famous Oratory, which enjoyed the patronage of the King of Piedmont. He also enjoyed good relations with Turin's archbishop Luigi Fransoni, whose death in 1862 left the see vacant until Lorenzo Gastaldi replaced him in 1871. Don Bosco was also a good friend of Gastaldi and had nominated him first for the see of Saluzzo and then that of Turin. A Rosminian progressive, Gastaldi, however, distanced himself from Don Bosco, and each ultimately considered the other as an enemy. Lenti's work examines the nature of the struggle between the two antagonists. The story of the bad blood between the two occupies the bulk of the text. Much of it was a turf battle. That some young men, for example, preferred to enter the Salesian houses over life in the diocese led Gastaldi to charge that Don Bosco was stealing his seminarians. Clearly inflated egos on both sides worsened the situation, and in December of 1874 Gastaldi "issued a decree abrogating all favors, faculties and privileges granted to the Salesians by him and by his predecessors" (p. 163). While Pius IX was [End Page 978] alive Don Bosco had an ally in Rome, and the pontiff, in turn, relied on him for advice from Piedmont, the crucial engine of Italian unification. Lenti notes, however, that Bosco lost his advantage when Leo XIII came to the throne of St. Peter in 1878. The new pope courted the archbishop, and Gastaldi "finally prevailed," a victory confirmed in a forced Concordia which ordered Don Bosco to apologize in writing.

Lenti devotes his volume to Church administration rather than to the better-known story of Don Bosco's efforts regarding the social and spiritual demands of the nineteenth-century poor, the work that led to his recognition as a saint. Each of the three chapters are reprints of articles first published in The Journal of Salesian Studies. Taken together, however, they tell a coherent tale. Some minor typographical errors dot the text; an awkward transition to "Section Two" of Part One may cause some confusion; Gastaldi is referred to as Lawrence and as Lorenzo in various parts of the book; and the work suffers from the lack of an index. Lenti's study, on the other hand, is laudably even-handed and refrains from tarring Gastaldi. Some of the most appealing passages of the book, in fact, treat him humanely and even with admiration. Almost a century and a half later, however, the squabbles often appear petty and arcane. The book, nevertheless, provides valuable insight into the occasionally sordid nuts and bolts of church politics. Perhaps Lenti's treatment of the controversy between Don Bosco and Lorenzo Gastaldi will lead some readers, active in their own parish politics, to ask themselves, "How much has really changed?"

Roy Domenico
The University of Scranton
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