Walking Together: A Synodal Journey with the Salesian Family in the Jubilee Year and Beyond

 

“When we forget our origins—the struggles, sacrifices, and vision of those who came before us—we risk losing our identity and mission.”

Introduction: Remembering Our Roots

On July 14, 2025, the first reading at Mass reminded us of a haunting reality: “Now there arose a new king over Egypt, who did not know Joseph” (Ex 1:8). In his homily, Fr. Francis Alencherry drew a profound connection to our own Salesian journey. Pharaoh’s ignorance of Joseph’s legacy led to fear and oppression of the Israelites. When we, too, forget our spiritual ancestors—Don Bosco, Mother Mazzarello, and the pioneering missionaries in our region—we risk falling into a similar pattern: fear, complacency, and disconnection from our original charism. He emphasized that forgetting our spiritual origins and the centrality of Christ, has the same dangerous effect on us.

As the Salesian Province of Kolkata (INC) enters its centenary phase, and as the global Church celebrates the Jubilee Year of 2025, this is a kairos moment—a graced time—to look both backward and forward. The story of our beginnings is not just nostalgia; it is a compass guiding us into the future. Our forebearers imparted invaluable lessons through struggle and sacrifice. To forget them is to risk drifting into fear, routine, and loss of purpose.

The vision of Don Bosco was not confined to 19th-century Turin. His dreams were global, missionary, and inclusive—centred on Christ, the young, and the Church. The General Chapter 29 (GC29) of the Salesian Congregation boldly affirms this by urging every Salesian and lay collaborator to walk together on a synodal journey—listening, discerning, and building community.

The Role of Leadership in Preserving Charism

Imagine Don Bosco’s early Oratory scene—a prototype of pedagogy and community.

Leadership is not merely about administration. It is, at its heart, about safeguarding the spirit and ensuring that institutions remain faithful to their original fire. This insight was powerfully reinforced with the recent appointment of Fr. Mauro Mantovani as the Rector of the Salesian Community at the Holy See (July 12, 2025). In his installation message, Fr. Fabio Attard emphasized three essential marks of leadership that apply equally across our province and works:

• Christocentrism: A Salesian community must shine with the light of Christ. We are not social workers or educators first—we are disciples. When Christ is at the center, our mission finds its true energy and direction.
• Relationship with Jesus: If our roots are not deep in personal prayer and love for Jesus, our works may become efficient but hollow. Without Jesus, our Preventive System loses its soul.
• Community as Family: In a world marked by fragmentation and loneliness, young people are not seeking perfection or performance—they are hungry for authenticity, for belonging. A Salesian home must be just that: a home.

These principles are not exclusive to Rome. They are just as urgent in our houses in Kolkata, Krishnagar, Siliguri, Bangladesh, Nepal and beyond. Whether a Rector with decades of service or a young priest entering leadership, we are all called to be animators of communion, upholding Don Bosco’s legacy and translating it into new contexts. Salesian leaders are called to build “bridges of fraternity and service” by upholding Don Bosco’s charism and responding creatively to emerging challenges.

Collaboration with the Laity: A Synodal Imperative

The Synodal Church envisioned by Pope Francis calls for a radical shift: from doing things for the people to doing things with them. This is not a new idea for us. Don Bosco always believed in partnership—be it with Mamma Margaret, the first Co-operators, or his early lay supporters. Collaboration is not just strategic—it is theological. Vatican II and subsequent Salesian directives have emphasized the partnership between religious and laity in mission. This synodal “walking together” echoes the early belief of Don Bosco.

Today, that same vision is bearing fruit through vibrant lay movements and structures within the Salesian Family:

• Salesian Co-operators carry the spirit of the Preventive System into homes, workplaces, and parishes. Their daily witness makes Don Bosco’s dream tangible.
• Past Pupils are the living fruits of Salesian education, now making a difference in society—as professionals, politicians, parents, and priests.
• Associations like ADMA, Savio Clubs, SYM, and Vincent de Paul groups are cultivating faith, service, and joy among the youth, creating new spaces of encounter with Jesus.
• Parish Pastoral Councils and Economic Commissions ensure shared governance and accountability, embodying the principle of subsidiarity and empowering the baptized laity to exercise their full dignity and responsibility.

This synergy between religious and laypersons is not optional. It is a synodal necessity. It is the only way forward for our Province, especially as vocations among clergy decrease and the complexity of our mission grows. Lay formation, therefore, cannot be an afterthought. It must be at the heart of every Salesian institution. For a future Church with fewer clerical vocations and greater societal complexity, they are essential. Emphasizing lay formation and encouraging co-responsible leadership is crucial.

The Centenary Challenge: Renewing Our Mission

As we stand at the threshold of the 100th year of the Salesian Province of Kolkata (INC), it is a time not only for celebration but also for sincere examination  and intentional evaluation and commit to renewal. The spirit of a Jubilee is not triumphalism but teshuvah—a biblical return, a recommitment to the covenant.

Some urgent questions confront us:

• Are we faithfully transmitting Don Bosco’s charism to the next generation? Charism is not inherited automatically. It must be reinterpreted and re-owned by every new era. Are our schools, parishes, youth centres, and formation houses alive with Salesian passion and pedagogy?
• Are our structures and ministries still serving the poorest and most marginalized youth? Don Bosco’s preferential option was always for the abandoned and vulnerable. Have we become too institutional, too comfortable, too self-preserving? Where is the slum child, the tribal girl, the dropout boy, in our pastoral planning?
• How can we strengthen lay formation and leadership in our works? Formation is not just for novices and seminarians. Laypeople also need spaces for theological, spiritual, and leadership training—spaces that honour their vocation and equip them to co-lead the mission.

This centenary is a sacred challenge. It invites every Salesian house and work to look afresh at its vision, staffing, outreach, and effectiveness. This centenary is not simply a milestone—it is a mission calling. It demands review, prophetic choices, and courageous solidarity with those on the margins. It calls for both reform and revival—bold decisions, prophetic choices, and renewed solidarity with the poor.

The Spirituality of Walking Together

“Synodality” is not just a new buzzword. It is a spirituality—a way of being Church. Pope Francis describes it as “journeying together: laity, pastors, the Bishop of Rome” embracing shared mission and discernment. For the Salesian Family, this means rediscovering our identity as a people on the move—pilgrims and companions on a shared mission. GC29 embodied this through its structured working process—listening, discerning, proposing—across six commissions with intercultural participation.

Synodality demands listening—not only to the Holy Spirit but to each other. It requires letting go of clericalism and embracing shared discernment. It opens up space for voices from the margins: women, youth, lay leaders, persons with disabilities, and those from diverse cultures and faiths.

The Salesian way has always been communal and incarnational. From the Oratory of Valdocco to the schools of Siliguri, Nepal, Bangladesh, Krishnagar, hill institutions,  to the shelters in Kolkata, our strength has come from family spirit, from being among the people—not above them.

As Don Bosco once told his boys, “For you I study, for you I work, for you I live, and for you I am ready even to give my life” —this encapsulates the heart of synodal walking: humble, hopeful, and inclusive. That same pastoral heart must guide our journey today: humble, hopeful, synodal. We must recognize the voices of the margins—laywomen, youth, multicultural members, and those living on society’s peripheries—and truly listen.

Conclusion: A Future Built on Fraternity and Fidelity

In this Jubilee Year of 2025 and the centenary ahead, we embrace the Rector Major’s call: “Live your mission with passion and fidelity.” Passion invites us to dream anew; fidelity keeps us anchored to Christ and the charism. These twin beacons light our path forward. As we gather in various moments of community life—whether meetings, retreats, assemblies, or agape meals—let us do so not merely to organise events but to kindle communion.

As a Salesian Family—religious and lay, from youth councils to parish assemblies, from formation houses to mission fields—we recommit to the synodal journey. We plant ourselves firmly on the foundations laid in Turin—and at the oratory in Valdocco—but look ahead into the promise.

Passion means daring to dream again. Fidelity means remaining rooted in Christ and the charism. Together, they form the compass for our future.

The Jubilee Year 2025 is not the end of a journey—it is a new beginning. As we walk this synodal path—with the Salesian Family, with young people, with the Church universal—let us carry with us the memory of our founders, the courage of our predecessors, and the joy of the Gospel.

May Don Bosco, Mary Help of Christians, and all Salesian saints accompany us. May our unity, our shared mission, and our synodal way renew Don Bosco’s dream, transforming lives for generations to come.

"The Salesian Family does not walk alone. Together, in communion with the Church, we walk the path of renewal, fraternity, and mission—faithful to the dream that once began in a humble oratory in Turin, now blossoming across the world."

Bibliography

• Alencherry, Francis. Homily on Exodus 1:8 (July 14, 2025). Salesian Province of Kolkata, July 14, 2025.
• Attard, Fabio. Installation Address for Fr. Mauro Mantovani. Holy See Salesian Community, July 12, 2025.
• Bozzolo, Andrea, and Eunan McDonnell. "The Synodal Method in the General Chapter," Salesian Bulletin (Turin), March 4, 2025.
• Salesian Congregation. GC29: Working Document. South Asia Province. 2024.
• Salesian Congregation. "Chapter Members Working on the Three Core Themes of GC29." Salesian Bulletin, March 7, 2025.
• Salesian Congregation. "GC29: Walking Together with Unity and a Synodal Method." ANS – Turin, March 3, 2025.
• Vatican Council II. Lumen Gentium and Apostolicam Actuositatem. Vatican City: Libreria Editrice Vaticana, 1964.
• Vatican. “Message of His Holiness Pope Francis for Lent 2025: Let us journey together in hope.” February 6, 2025. https://www.vatican.va/content/francesco/en/messages/lent/documents/20250206‑messaggio‑quaresima2025.html
• Vatican II. Gaudium et Spes. Vatican City: Libreria Editrice Vaticana, 1965.
• Vatican II. Gravissimum Educationis. Vatican City: Libreria Editrice Vaticana, 1965.

To Think with the Church

 I have spent the last thirty-three years of my priesthood and forty-two years of my consecrated religious life, mostly as a priest, educator in faith and life, writer, and pastoring youth. To be with the Church, according to me is, that to think with the Church one requires that one thinks. Only through thinking that the Church doctrines, dogmas and directives appeal to the will and to reason.  We believe understanding, and understand believing.  Above all, loving  we obey, and we are enlightened. We then open to the light.  We hear and heed to the heart, and not just “hearing about,” being apprised of.  The faith matter is not mere “theological data”. Instead of turning away from facts, it is meant to dive deeply into “thinking about reality”.[1]  We often run the risk of substituting reality with subjective imagination and faith-expressions,  instead of treading truth with passion and reason.  Going behind the non-essentials, leads often to confusion, corruption, and contempt.

 The Church has no power to declare the bad to be good. God is Absolute Good. We need to be realistically grounded and not be on “high spiritual romance”.  Things can always be otherwise.  If so, Church-sin can do “immense social harm” if we think with Church’s thinking, and not think.

 To some conservative factions of the Catholic Church who consider him to be  a dangerously progressive, the present Pope Francis in his epiphany homily this year on the issue of  ideological splits in Church, asked the faithful to abandon “ecclesiastical ideologies”, and focus on poor, not 'theory'. He warned against “basking in some elegant religious theory” instead of finding “God who comes down to visit us”, especially in the poor. The Church needs to ensure that "our faith will not be reduced to an assemblage of religious devotions or mere outward appearance.” Pope Francis allows “the possibility of blessing couples in irregular situations and same-sex couples without officially validating their status or changing in any way the Church’s perennial teaching on marriage”. On this controversial blessing of the same-sex couples, while making efforts to make LGBTQ Catholics feel welcome, he stresses that the ordinary pastoral blessing is not heretical and that it has no doctrinal grounds to reject.

A lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, intersex, and queer (LGBTIQ) Christian tries to follow a man-Jesus who, without any formal scientific theological qualification, confronted difficult questions of life and society, with responses arising out of common sense, for the common good. His responses based themselves on understanding of his Father’s will and the real situation of the person in time and place, and the rest did not matter for him. He did not  act according to set precedence, norms, rules, rituals, canons, or magisterium. Jesus mostly took a different path naturally programmed by God his Father, to outgrow his ministry. He often engaged in “disruptive behaviour” in all that he said, did or failed to do. He, the ‘untrained’ one,  trained himself the Father’s way, who is ever understanding, gentle, kind yet firm.

For the religious leaders, Jesus seemed to be “intrinsically disordered”, one who  was disrespectful to the prevalent religious laws and directives. Jesus had a “theological discourse”, while exposing the Samaritan woman’s multiple marriages and her cohabiting nature — irregular sexual relationship. Unlike other ‘religious experts’ (Pharisees, Scribes), Jesus  the teacher committed himself to educating with the heart, with ‘loving kindness’, and dialogued with sinners with respect and dignity,  calling them to repentance. He did not condone sins, neither condemn them.

 God through the Church calls all to conversion and commission all to be his messengers of love — the good news. Jesus the Messiah, the Saviour of the world, likewise want the Church, his Body, to act in ways that fittingly qualifies its members, in Jesus’ mode of ministry. Breaking the religious rules (man-made), can hasten the ‘salvation of the world’. This is the vision of Christ, — the coming of the Kingdom of God. This is the thinking of the Church — a new way of ordering things, with love and non-violence. Like Jesus, the Church too has to face the resistance of “the world,” — cruelty, corruption, betrayal, denial, lies,  hatred and violence. God, the Absolute, who is all love, is above all religions or societal norms. Our pettiness and stupidity, our human justification cannot mow down His love. God meets us as we ARE, because God IS — Absolute Being without any form. Human encounter with God is devoid of judgments that are subject to the religious and societal norms. This is the new thinking of the Church, inaugurating the new creation and  bringing humanity into communion with God.

 Therefore, the traditionalists are rightly to be disturbed, just as those religious leaders two thousand years ago. They  engineered the 'blasphemer-Jesus’ execution because he posed a threat to the status quo, to their control over the religiosity of the common people. The hardness of human heart rejects God’s merciful love, and tries to “usurp the place of God”. 

 The secular cultural world, with regard to the Church, considers that something in her that is indissolubly linked to the human heart. Whereas, for Christians, the Church acts as the conscience of people, to act for the common good and coexist peacefully. It is a ‘religion of  freedom’, enlightened by the high reason of Christian faith in Jesus. She constructs common goals and tries to solve concrete problems of the society.  The Church combines the secular and the religious dimensions, converging on a common  and mutual enrichment. Facing a crisis of values and the loss of the religious living, the Church validly still continues to build up the kingdom of God — the Absolute, within a secularized world.

 

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[1] Anthony Esolen, To Think with the Church’, https://www.thecatholicthing.org/2024/01/08/to-think-with-the-church-2/?utm_source=The+Catholic+Thing+Daily&utm, 9.1.2024