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Turning Bad Boys Into Saintly Men: The Work of Saint John Bosco, by Dawn Beutner – Brown Pelican Society of Lousiana

Turning Bad Boys Into Saintly Men: The Work of Saint John Bosco, by Dawn Beutner

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Saint of the Day for February 1: St. Ansgar (801 – February 3, 865)
February 1, 2025

Left: John Bosco in an 1880 photograph; right: Bosco (sitting at right) during a visit to Barcelona in 1886. (Images: Wikipedia)

By Dawn Beutner, Catholic World Report, January 30, 2025

Dawn Beutner is the author of The Leaven of the Saints: Bringing Christ into a Fallen World (Ignatius Press, 2023), and Saints: Becoming an Image of Christ Every Day of the Year also from Ignatius Press. …

The nineteenth-century Italian saint had a magnetic effect on children and adults because he possessed an abundance of profound, Christlike joy.

The tragedy of boys failing to grow into good men is not a modern phenomenon. While there are many reasons that young men today drift through life or engage in dangerous behaviors, this is not a new problem.

In the twenty-first century, this probably has much to do with boys lacking father figures in their lives because of the Sexual Revolution. In nineteenth-century Italy, another revolution was at least partly to blame: the Industrial Revolution.

Granted, many boys in Italy in the 1800s fell into lives of crime for other reasons. Plagues and famines created numerous orphans, depriving children of family support and education. Italy was also plagued by movements which advocated violence for the sake of political change, which attracted young, angry men. …