St. Mary Mazzarello Our Co-founder

God’s ways are marvelous. Contemporaneously with Don Bosco, Mary Mazzarello in a little village of Mornese, thirsted with the desire to help girls. She too did receive a heavenly mandate. While walking down the uninhabited slopes of Borgo Alto, she saw a group of girls playing in the non-existent playground and a strong voice firm and steady gave her a legacy “I entrust them to you’’. Was it a dream, a hallucination? Yet there was fully awaken, walking in full consciousness.

In 1864, came the momentous meeting with Don Bosco. “He is a saint! I can feel it!” she said to all. Don Bosco too saw something equally precious in her. In Mary Mazzarello a likeminded soul, Salesian by instinct, Don Bosco found a ready, active, receptive and creative collaborator. 

In a society, which basically ignored the potential and rights of peasant women, Mary Mazzarello and the early Salesian Sisters understood that education was the key to their empowerment. In creative fidelity they incarnated Don Bosco’s Preventive System in the world of women.

August 5, 1872 saw the foundation of another new branch of Don Bosco’s family: the Institute of the Daughters of Mary Help of Christians (FMA), familiarly known as Salesian Sisters of Don Bosco, with Mary Mazzarello as their leader. Imbued with the spirit of Don Bosco, Mary Mazzarello and the first Sisters marched forward in the quest of providing integral formation for girls. In 1875 saw the expansion of the Salesian work outside Europe. In 1922 India welcomed the Silesians Sisters. Today, Don Bosco’s unique charism for young people lives on-  ever alive and ever relevant to the signs of the time, in different parts of the world where Salesian presence is felt and touched through his Sons and Daughters. 

As the feminine branch of Salesian Family, Mary Mazzarello sought to do for girls what Don Bosco was doing for boys – that particular feminine genius which blends itself so well to nurturing, teaching and encouraging the young girls along the way of Integral growth and development.

Mary Mazzarelo died on May 14, 1881, in Nizza Monferrato, Italy. She was beatified on November 20, 1938 and canonized on June 24, 1951.

Today Don Bosco’s unique Charism for youth lives on undiminished in its original freshness and dynamism in every corner of the earth. Don Bosco International educates over 15 million students in the world. Where youth exists there Don Bosco is present through his Sons and Daughters for whom Don Bosco is a never tiring Father, Teacher, Founder, Friend and Leader ever relevant for Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow.