Letters to the Confreres of the English Province (1887-1909)

Introduction critical text and notes by M. McPake &  W.-J. Dickson

INTRODUCTION Michael Rua (1837-1910) was a pupil, then the lifetime collaborator and finally, the first successor of St John Bosco as Rector Major of the Salesian Society (1888-1910). During his Rectorate the Salesians grew from 1030 members in 64 houses to 4420 confreres scattered across the globe. These letters offer the reader a glimpse of the character of their writer and of the pastoral care he took of a small group of relatively insignificant Salesians in what was very often the inhospitable atmosphere of the British Empire at the height of its power. Although Don Rua’s virtues and life have been critically analysed and written about during the process of his beatification, there still remains much to be discovered of the man who by inclination and deliberate choice, was largely overshadowed (at least in the minds of most Salesians) by the towering charismatic figure of Don Bosco. What is presented here is a collection of 238 letters that Don Rua sent to the confreres of the English Province in the twenty years of his Rectorate. They represent only a tiny fragment of what must have been the unrelenting and massive correspondence that he carried on with the confreres in every mission right across the world.