St. Dominic Savio finds a dying man and never says how

LONDON, England, 1914 AD — One day in Turin, a boy came to his teacher’s room. The boy was Saint Dominic Savio. His teacher was Saint John Bosco, a priest. St. Dominic Savio said: “Come quickly. Father, come with me, there is a good work to be done.”

St. John Bosco asked where they were going. The boy only told him to hurry: “Make haste, make haste.” St. John Bosco wasn’t sure at first, but he went. He went because “past experience had shown me the importance of such invitations.”

Up to the third floor

St. Dominic Savio walked in front and St. John Bosco followed. They went down one street, then another, then a third. They turned one more corner, and neither of them said a word.

The boy stopped at a door and went up the stairs to the third floor. He rang the bell hard. He turned to St. John Bosco, said “It is here that you are wanted,” and walked away.

A woman opened the door. She said: “Oh, make haste, quick, or it will be too late. My husband has abandoned his faith; now he is at the point of death and wishes to die a Catholic.”

St. John Bosco went straight to the man’s bed and heard his confession. Someone had sent for the parish priest, and he arrived just as St. John Bosco finished. The parish priest had time to anoint the man only once. Then the man died.

St. John Bosco wrote: “Afterwards I asked Dominic how he knew that there was a man ill at that house; he did not answer, but looked at me with an air of sadness, and I noticed that tears were beginning to come. I did not question him further.”

Nobody had written to him

St. Dominic Savio had come to live in St. John Bosco’s house in the autumn of 1854 AD. The house was the Oratory of St. Francis de Sales, at Valdocco on the edge of Turin. St. Dominic Savio died at his family’s home in Mondonio on March 9, 1857 AD, when he was not yet fifteen.

The boy’s friends asked St. John Bosco to write a book about his pupil’s life. St. John Bosco wrote it soon after. He promised that the book would tell only what he or those friends had seen.

According to longstanding Catholic Tradition, St. Dominic Savio came to St. John Bosco another time in those years. He asked permission to go home to Mondonio. His mother was seriously ill, he said, and Our Lady wanted to cure her.

St. John Bosco asked him: “How did you get this news of your mother’s illness? Has anyone written to you?” St. Dominic Savio answered: “No one has written or said a word to me, Father, but I know just the same.” St. John Bosco didn’t ask any more, and let him go.

At home the boy found his mother, Brigid Savio, very ill. His father, Charles Savio, had gone to fetch the doctor. St. Dominic Savio went into her room, jumped up on the bed, put his arms round her and kissed her. Then he left as quickly as he had come and went straight back to Turin.

When the doctor arrived, he found Brigid Savio well again. Back at the Oratory, St. Dominic Savio went straight to St. John Bosco. He told his teacher what had happened, and how Our Lady had cured his mother.