austraLasia #2751
(Note: the medico said "3 weeks - no computer, please!" Right now at 6.20 pm Jerusalem time, it is 3 weeks to the very hour. I have been obedient. Now we can resume transmission! But you may need to help kick-start things again with some news items from around the region; haven't been looking at the computer screen, or trawling sites, remember!)
Don Bosco blackmailed
LEGAZPI CITY: 20 November 2010 -- Situated in the last barrio of the city famous for its perfectly coned Mayon Volcano, the Don Bosco Agro-Mechanical Technology Center in Banquerohan, Legazpi City, Philippines North Province celebrated a Partners’ Day on 5 November 2010. Attended by eighty representatives of the training centre’s individual and corporate benefactors, as well as by government agencies and non-government organizations supporting its programs, the affair recognized the contributions of the benefactors and highlighted the fruits of the ten years of presence of Don Bosco in this vast agricultural region called the Bicol Region.
The founder of the training center is the bishop emeritus of Legazpi City, Bishop Jose Sorra, who was present during the event, along with the incumbent bishop, Joel Baylon. Of interest is Bishop Sorra’s account during the affair of how he blackmailed Don Bosco to have the Salesians work in his diocese:
“For 45 years since 1951, all of my three bishop-predecessors in the Diocese of Legazpi had respectively been inviting the Don Bosco Fathers to put up a vocational high school for the out-of-school youth over here in the diocese.
The Salesian Superiors’ usual stereotyped response, however, was: Bishop, we don’t have the Don Bosco personnel and we don’t have the money, either, for the land, the building, and the facilities.
In July 1996, we tried once again our luck with the Italian Don Bosco Provincial Superior, then the Rev. Fr. Luciano Capelli, SDB, who is currently the Salesian Bishop of Solomon Islands. Without much ado, we offered him a deal, to wit: 1) that we give Don Bosco 12 hectares of agricultural land for its perpetual use, and 2) that we put up a building-complex furnished with all the needed facilities and equipment; and, on Don Bosco’s part, to simply take over the management and operation of the Vocation School. Finally, thank God, the deal was done!
Meanwhile, even before the approval by his Provincial Superior, Brother Parolin, then the (Technical) Director of the Don Bosco of Makati, and I had already been doing some pencil-pushing behind the scene- on the layout of the proposed building complex, the vocational curriculum, and the number and kinds of vocational facilities and equipment. And, above all the total cost!
Then I told Brother Parolin, you had better pray to your Patron Saint Don John Bosco, as you had never ever prayed before. Meanwhile, for almost three years then from 1996 to 1999, I was crisscrossing Europe by plane and train, as a beggar looking around for millions of euros for Don Bosco Legazpi.
One day in the course of my trip, I felt almost exhausted and went to the big Don Bosco School and Community in Belgium– just to rest. After my Mass at the Don Bosco chapel, I prayed and talked straight and bluntly to the Saint, saying: “John, I’m now very tired looking for money for you and your poor boys back home. You had better help me out, or I go home to tell your boys that you seem not to care about them anymore…”
And, believe me, the poor Saint apparently got blackmailed. At breakfast table, no less than the Don Bosco Community’s treasurer suggested that I go to Germany with a note from him to the Director of Misereor, together with our prepared staggering total project cost.
In the afternoon of the same day, I was with the Misereor Director in Aachen, Germany. He asked me to come back the following day. Then, right then and there, he smilingly told me, “Bishop, you’re quite lucky, your project proposal with its total cost has been approved by our Misereor Council.”
In January of the year 2000, we started the work on the building complex. And in 10 months time, the imposing Don Bosco building complex with its Community’s rectory was done. Then, finally, the Don Bosco Agro-mechanical Centre of the Diocese of Legazpi was all set for operation. His Eminence, Jose T. Cardinal Sanchez, the Prefect of the Congregation of the Clergy in Rome, in the presence of the Apostolic Nuncio to the Philippines and some 20 Bishops, dozens of priests, religious, and the lay-faithful, blessed the building complex on the 29th of June, the Golden Foundation Anniversary of the Diocese of Legazpi!”
_________________
AustraLasia is an email service for the Salesian Family of Asia Pacific. It also functions as an agency for ANS based in Rome. For queries please contact admin@bosconet.aust.com . Use Bosconet-wiki to be interactive. RSS feeds - just go to Bosconet, click on austraLasia 2010 in the sidebar. You will see the RSS orange icon in your browser address bar - add it from there. Or be interactive with the EAO blog Cetera Tolle. Avail yourself of the Salesian Digital Library at http://sdl.sdb.org
(Note: the medico said "3 weeks - no computer, please!" Right now at 6.20 pm Jerusalem time, it is 3 weeks to the very hour. I have been obedient. Now we can resume transmission! But you may need to help kick-start things again with some news items from around the region; haven't been looking at the computer screen, or trawling sites, remember!)
Don Bosco blackmailed
LEGAZPI CITY: 20 November 2010 -- Situated in the last barrio of the city famous for its perfectly coned Mayon Volcano, the Don Bosco Agro-Mechanical Technology Center in Banquerohan, Legazpi City, Philippines North Province celebrated a Partners’ Day on 5 November 2010. Attended by eighty representatives of the training centre’s individual and corporate benefactors, as well as by government agencies and non-government organizations supporting its programs, the affair recognized the contributions of the benefactors and highlighted the fruits of the ten years of presence of Don Bosco in this vast agricultural region called the Bicol Region.
The founder of the training center is the bishop emeritus of Legazpi City, Bishop Jose Sorra, who was present during the event, along with the incumbent bishop, Joel Baylon. Of interest is Bishop Sorra’s account during the affair of how he blackmailed Don Bosco to have the Salesians work in his diocese:
“For 45 years since 1951, all of my three bishop-predecessors in the Diocese of Legazpi had respectively been inviting the Don Bosco Fathers to put up a vocational high school for the out-of-school youth over here in the diocese.
The Salesian Superiors’ usual stereotyped response, however, was: Bishop, we don’t have the Don Bosco personnel and we don’t have the money, either, for the land, the building, and the facilities.
In July 1996, we tried once again our luck with the Italian Don Bosco Provincial Superior, then the Rev. Fr. Luciano Capelli, SDB, who is currently the Salesian Bishop of Solomon Islands. Without much ado, we offered him a deal, to wit: 1) that we give Don Bosco 12 hectares of agricultural land for its perpetual use, and 2) that we put up a building-complex furnished with all the needed facilities and equipment; and, on Don Bosco’s part, to simply take over the management and operation of the Vocation School. Finally, thank God, the deal was done!
Meanwhile, even before the approval by his Provincial Superior, Brother Parolin, then the (Technical) Director of the Don Bosco of Makati, and I had already been doing some pencil-pushing behind the scene- on the layout of the proposed building complex, the vocational curriculum, and the number and kinds of vocational facilities and equipment. And, above all the total cost!
Then I told Brother Parolin, you had better pray to your Patron Saint Don John Bosco, as you had never ever prayed before. Meanwhile, for almost three years then from 1996 to 1999, I was crisscrossing Europe by plane and train, as a beggar looking around for millions of euros for Don Bosco Legazpi.
One day in the course of my trip, I felt almost exhausted and went to the big Don Bosco School and Community in Belgium– just to rest. After my Mass at the Don Bosco chapel, I prayed and talked straight and bluntly to the Saint, saying: “John, I’m now very tired looking for money for you and your poor boys back home. You had better help me out, or I go home to tell your boys that you seem not to care about them anymore…”
And, believe me, the poor Saint apparently got blackmailed. At breakfast table, no less than the Don Bosco Community’s treasurer suggested that I go to Germany with a note from him to the Director of Misereor, together with our prepared staggering total project cost.
In the afternoon of the same day, I was with the Misereor Director in Aachen, Germany. He asked me to come back the following day. Then, right then and there, he smilingly told me, “Bishop, you’re quite lucky, your project proposal with its total cost has been approved by our Misereor Council.”
In January of the year 2000, we started the work on the building complex. And in 10 months time, the imposing Don Bosco building complex with its Community’s rectory was done. Then, finally, the Don Bosco Agro-mechanical Centre of the Diocese of Legazpi was all set for operation. His Eminence, Jose T. Cardinal Sanchez, the Prefect of the Congregation of the Clergy in Rome, in the presence of the Apostolic Nuncio to the Philippines and some 20 Bishops, dozens of priests, religious, and the lay-faithful, blessed the building complex on the 29th of June, the Golden Foundation Anniversary of the Diocese of Legazpi!”
_________________
AustraLasia is an email service for the Salesian Family of Asia Pacific. It also functions as an agency for ANS based in Rome. For queries please contact admin@bosconet.aust.com . Use Bosconet-wiki to be interactive. RSS feeds - just go to Bosconet, click on austraLasia 2010 in the sidebar. You will see the RSS orange icon in your browser address bar - add it from there. Or be interactive with the EAO blog Cetera Tolle. Avail yourself of the Salesian Digital Library at http://sdl.sdb.org
