In this year of Jubilee and remembrance of the 150th anniversary of the first missionary expedition, we would like today, 25 February, to remember in a special way the sacrifice of the first Salesian martyrs, Bishop Luigi Versiglia and Father Callisto Caravario, missionaries in China, (whose patron saint is Mary Help of Christians), who filled the chalice of sweat and the chalice of blood that Don Bosco had seen rise to heaven in his missionary dream.
On the Colle Don Bosco, in the M.E.M. – Missionary Ethnological Museum, the sheet used to collect the bodies of the two Salesians after their martyrdom is preserved, a sheet that still bears traces of the blood shed by the two martyrs.
This precious sheet will be exceptionally displayed today at the prayer of Vespers of the General Chapter of the Salesians gathered in Turin-Valdocco.
“The blood of martyrs is the seed of new Christians”.
