The Dream of Don Bosco

João Belchior Bosco, known as Don Bosco, was born in the north of Italy in 1815. In 1841 he was ordained a priest, beginning a remarkable career, and he founded the Order of the Salesians. He died in Turin at the age of seventy-two and was canonized in 1934 by Pope Pius XI.

Don Bosco had many prophetic dreams, and more than once he foretold the death of well-known figures. In one such dream, while still very young, he saw himself doing a Latin exercise. On waking he wrote it down and asked a priest to help him translate it. In the next lesson that very text was dictated, and Don Bosco did it perfectly. Of this gift the saint himself said: “Although the goodness of God has been generous toward me, I have never claimed to know or to do supernatural things.”

One of his prophecies is the one known as the full moons. It runs:

“Four hundred days after the month of flowers that will have two full moons, revolution will be proclaimed in Italy. Two hundred days later, the Pope will be forced to leave Rome and will wander for a hundred days, after which he will return to his capital and sing in St. Peter’s the Te Deum of Salvation.”

Don Bosco writes that in 1870 he found himself in what felt like a supernatural reality, and heard a voice that told him things to come. Some of what he heard:

“Now the voice of Heaven is for the Shepherd of Shepherds. You are in the great conference with your assessors, but the enemy of good does not rest for an instant. He studies and works every art against you. He will sow discord among your assessors, he will raise enemies among my children. The powers of the age will vomit fire, and they would have the words choked in the throats of the guardians of my law. This will not happen.

What shall I do? I will strike the shepherds, I will scatter the flock, so that those seated in the chair of Moses may seek good pastures and the flock may meekly listen and be fed. But upon the flock and upon the shepherds my hand will weigh. Famine and plague will make mothers weep for the blood of their sons and of their husbands dead on enemy soil.

And you, Rome, what will become of you? Ungrateful Rome, soft Rome, proud Rome. You have come to such a point that you seek nothing else, nor admire anything in your sovereign but luxury, forgetting that his true glory rests upon Mount Golgotha.

Rome, I will come to you four times. The first time I will strike your lands and your people. The second, I will carry destruction and ruin to your very walls. Do you still not open your eyes? I will come a third time and tear down your defenses and your defenders, and at the command of the Father will follow the reign of terror, of fear, and of desolation. But my wise ones flee. My law goes on being trampled. So I will make my fourth visit. War, plague, and famine are the scourges with which the pride and the malice of men will be punished.”

In another of his prophetic dreams, Don Bosco saw a great crowd of men, women, the old, children, monks, nuns, and priests, with the Holy Father at their head, leaving the Vatican in the manner of a procession. Along the way they came to a small square strewn with the dead and the wounded, many of whom begged insistently for comfort. The Holy Father walked on, having covered a distance of some two hundred paces, and there the dream breaks off.