Long week - mission accomplished

Aldo completed a long week with Arthur putting his writing in order and preparing it for publication.

Arthur's research has been ongoing since 1981, when he was part of a team of three Salesians who left Don Bosco Hall to go to Rome to study Salesian Spirituality at the Salesian Pontifical University. The other two Salesians, Tomás Juárez and John Itzaina, had been designated as members of the formation team for the theology students of the San Francisco province; Arthur had been teaching Sacred Scripture since 1953, and since 1975 attempting to complete his doctorate in Sacred Scripture with the Jesuits at Berkeley. However, the Salesian general council was attempting to take initial formation in the direction of more-in-depth grounding in Salesian spirit and praxis. Thus, when Arthur, Tom and John left Berkeley in 1981 to go to Rome, Don Bosco Hall was temporarily closed and our theology students farmed out to the Eastern USA province.

Upon Arthur's return from Rome in 1983, he began to put together a plan for ongoing formation in Salesian fundamentals. He designed the program that would become the basis for the Institute of Salesian Studies (ISS), and this began at Don Bosco Hall in 1984. Since that time Arthur has done serious research into the life and works of the Founder (Don Bosco), and has taught core courses at the ISS. The content of what has been 21 years of Arthur's teaching forms the corpus of the work that Aldo Giraudo is now working to have published.

"No one else in the Salesian world has developed so systematic a presentation of Don Bosco's life and work as has Arthur Lenti," Aldo told me today. "We need to get this into print and spread around to English-speaking Salesians. We also need to think of how to translate this work into the major languages used in the Salesian world."

I was very encouraged my Aldo's enthusiastic report, as was Mary Greenan and Tom Prendiville. And Aldo has been hard at it all week, helping Arthur to put his writings into a publishable form. We celebrated the accomplishments of this very busy week by going out for an American dinner at Pyramid's Brewery: Aldo, Mary Greenan and I.