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MARGARET OCCHIENA |
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Mamma Margaret exhibition, Rome Pisana 2006 |
Beginning of the Process: 8-2-1995
Conclusion of the Process: 22-4-1996
Margaret Occhiena was born on the 1st
April 1788 at Capriglio, in the province of Asti, sixth of ten children.
The same day she was baptised in the Parish Church. Her parents were peasant
farmers full of good Christian attitudes and practices. From
when she was just a child Margaret was a great worker. She
had no opportunity for schooling because of the times she lived in and the
tasks she had to do, but her love for prayer gave her a wisdom which could
not be gained from books. In 1812 she married Francis Bosco. Francis was 27
years old, a widower, with a three year old son, Anthony, and a sick mother
to look after.
The following year Joseph was born and in 1815 John (the future Don Bosco).
They both moved to the Becchi, hamlet of Castelnuovo d’Asti. In 1817
Francis died of acute pneumonia. The twenty nine year old Margaret found
her self alone faced with being head of a family during a period
of terrible famine, and giving help to Francis’ mother, to Anthony,
and the little ones, Joseph and John. Margaret was a woman of great faith.
God was always foremost in her thoughts and always on her lips.
The love of the Lord was so strong in her that it gave her a mother’s
heart. A wise teacher, she knew how to combine fatherliness and motherhood,
kindness and firmness, vigilance and trust, familiarity and dialogue, bringing
up her children with disinterested love, both patient and demanding. Attentive
to their own experience, she trusted both in human means and divine assistance.
She brought up three children with very different temperaments, using
the same criteria with different methods. She taught them the catechism and
prepared them for their First Communion.
When she heard about John’s dream at the age of nine, she alone could
interpret it in the light of the Lord: “Who knows, but maybe
you should become a priest”. She allowed him to be with some
of the rougher lads, because they were better behaved around him. Anthony’s
hostility towards John’s studies forced her to send her younger son
away so he could study. She accompanied him all the way to priesthood.
That day she said something that would remain in Don Bosco’s heart for
the rest of his life. In 1846 when Don Bosco was seriously ill, Margaret went
to be with him and discovering there the good that he had been doing for poor
and abandoned youngsters.
When asked to go with him in this work she said: “ If you believe this
to be the will of the Lord, I am ready to go”. Mamma Margaret’s
presence turned the Oratory into a family. For ten years her life became entwined
with that of her son and with the beginnings of Salesian work: She was the
first and principal Cooperator of Don Bosco’s; she became the
maternal elements in the Preventive System; without realising it,
she was the "co-foundress" of the Salesian Family.
She died in Turin, struck down by pneumonia on the 25th November 1856,
at 68 years of age. Many youngsters went to the cemetery crying as they would
for their own mother. Generations of Salesians called her and will continue
to call her Mamma Margaret.
