St. Dominic Savio

Who they were

Dominic Savio was a blacksmith's son who came to St. John Bosco's Turin Oratory at twelve, and whom Bosco, who had seen thousands of boys, judged remarkable enough to write his biography. It is from Bosco's own affectionate, detailed account that we know him.

The famous episodes are a schoolboy's sanctity precisely. He broke up a rock duel between two classmates by standing between them holding up a small crucifix. Falsely accused, with another boy, of a classroom prank, he absorbed the master's public punishment in silence, and when the real culprits surfaced and he was asked why, answered that he had remembered how the Lord bore false accusation, and that the other boy was already in trouble enough. He founded a boys' sodality whose members Bosco later found among his best men. Chronically fragile, he was sent home ill and died at fourteen in 1857, telling his father: what beautiful things I see.

Why people turn to St. Dominic Savio

Students, altar servers, and choirs: the patron who was actually their age. The falsely accused, from the stove incident. And parents and teachers, who can meet in him the ceiling of what gentleness can grow.

How to ask their intercession

With a young person, for a young person. And the stove incident is the specific patronage: pray him for the kid taking blame that is not theirs.