Fr Paul Gooley reads today’s Gospel from Mark (6: 1-6) in which Jesus, returning to his hometown says, ‘A prophet is despised in his own country’. Afterwards, Fr Paul shares a little about the life of St John Bosco whose memorial we celebrate today. Fr Paul says, John was born in Piedmont of a peasant family, and he was brought up by his widowed mother. He became a priest. He settled in Turin, where, as in so many cities in the 19th century, the industrial revolution was bringing enormous movements of population and consequent social problems, especially for the young men who came there to work. John Bosco devoted himself to the care of the young, first of all by means of evening classes, to which hundreds came, and then by setting up a boarding-house for apprentices, and then workshops for their training and education. Despite many difficulties, caused both by the anti-clerical civil authorities and by the opposition of some senior people within the Church, his enterprise grew, and by 1868 over 800 boys and young men were under his care. To ensure the continuation of his work, he founded a congregation, which he named after St Francis de Sales (a saint for whom he had great admiration), and today the Salesians continue John Bosco’s work all over the world. So on this day, Fr Paul invites us to ask, ‘St John Bosco… Pray for us!’