Easter journey and retreat preparation

Last night (Easter Sunday night) a group of us left Rome for Torino. The group included students and staff from the UPS, from Testaccio, as well as various Salesians from the Roman province. Our destination is Annecy, for the annual retreat. We will be led through the retreat by Morand Wirth through the places of St Francis de Sales.

I am making this my annual retreat, and while I have been to Annecy three times already, I have never spent more than two days there. Needless to say, I am looking forward to this.

Okay, we got to Torino at 6:30, and reached the mother house at Valdocco at 7:15. Waiting for us was John Roche, who is from my own province of course. John is also taking part in this retreat, as are several others from the Don Bosco community of the UPS. He did not come with us on the bus last night because he traveled to Torino directly from Treviso, where he has been helping with Holy Week confessions. He has now had the experience of the Cure of Ars, for from the Saturday before Palm Sunday through Holy Saturday, he was hearing confessions for seven hours every day. And because there were a lot of people for the masses too, he was needed to preach. He said he learned more Italian in the confessional than in the Italian classes he took last September!

After morning prayers in the church of St Francis de Sales, and breakfast in the pilgrim lunch room, there was free time until 11:00 mass in the basilica. I saw a friend of mine from the 1970s, Franco Lotto. We visited for about an hour, but then I noticed that our Roman group was wandering around aimlessly. That's when it dawned on me. It is Easter Monday, which is a holiday in Italy. All the shops are closed today! So what are these guys going to do for the next two hours before Mass?

Saying goodbye to Franco, I went and found John Roche and a couple of Indian classmates of his (both of whom are named Sebastian) and offered to show them some of the historical places in the vicinity. They were pleased with this, and so I took them on a brisk walk to see some of the places within walking distance: the Rifugio, the little Hospital of St Filomena, the mother house of the Sister of St Anne (all founded by the Marchesa Barolo), the Cottolengo, the Insane Asylum (where they tried to cart off Don Bosco, but he slammed the carriage door on the monsignori, and they ended up there instead), the Shrine of Our Lady of Consolation, the main street of 19th Century Torino (Grosso Dora) and the path that Dominic Savio and John Cagliero used to take to get to school, the school where Savio, Rua, Cagliero, and classmates did their Middle School, the church of St Francis of Assisi, the City Hall, the church of the Dominicans where Don Bosco and the Oratory Boys ministered to the Cholera Victims in 1854…

Monument to St Joseph Cottolengo at the famous hospital that he founded

As I say, I brought them to these places really quickly, just touching the surface, since we only had about 90 minutes. But John and the two Sebastians were very happy, since they had heard of these places, but never even seen a photo of any of them. If there had been time, I would have taken them to the Cathedral to see the Shroud (encased, not on display), but there was no time really.

After mass and a quick lunch, we left Torino for the four hour bus ride to Annecy. Annecy is the home town of Francis de Sales. There were 57 of us on the bus (a bus which was designed for 40, but which has squeezed in more seats. It is not exactly American Airlines for leg room!) Then this evening, we started the retreat formally.