Salesian holiness

The Salesian Congregation in the world

Holiness in the Salesian Family: the fruit of a charism
Don Bosco did not want to found an institution. He wanted to communicate a style of life of divine inspiration, a way of devoting oneself to the education of the young that was within everyone’s reach: consecrated and lay, men and women, young and old. One of the most eloquent aspects of the vitality of the Salesian charism is the number of people who, by living this style, have attained holiness recognized by the Church. These are not exceptional and unreachable figures, but ordinary people who responded with fidelity to their daily vocation.

A family of saints
The Salesian Family today counts an extraordinary number of Blesseds and Saints, distributed among its various groups. There are Salesian priests and brothers, Daughters of Mary Help of Christians, members of the Secular Institute of the Volunteers of Don Bosco, lay young people and ordinary boys. This variety is not accidental: it says that the charism of Don Bosco does not belong to one category of people, but is an open proposal, capable of flowering in lives very different from one another.
Among the best-known saints of the Salesian Family are, besides Don Bosco himself, canonised in 1934, Saint Domenico Savio, a boy of fifteen who lived holiness in the simplicity of daily life, and Saint Mary Mazzarello, co-foundress of the Daughters of Mary Help of Christians. But alongside them there are dozens of Blesseds: martyrs, missionaries who died in the exercise of their service, educators who dedicated their lives to the young, lay people who bore witness to the Gospel in the ordinary circumstances of existence.

An ordinary holiness
What strikes one, looking at these faces, is the normality of their journeys. Don Bosco did not propose extraordinary ascetical practices to his boys. He told them that it was enough to do their daily duties well, to go to confession often, to receive the Eucharist and to stay away from sin. Domenico Savio had understood this message and lived it with disarming simplicity. His holiness was not made of striking gestures, but of attentiveness to others, of joy, of consistency.
This model continues to inspire the Salesian Family today. The holiness to which Don Bosco invited young people was not reserved for a few chosen souls, but was a concrete proposal for anyone who wished to live it: at school, at work, in the family, in the religious community.

A charism that generates life
The fact that the Salesian charism continues to produce holiness recognised by the Church is a sign of its vitality. It is not a patrimony of the past to be preserved, but a still active spring, capable of transforming persons and, through them, the contexts in which they live.

The Salesian Family looks at its saints and Blesseds not with the admiring distance with which one looks at something unattainable, but with the familiarity of those who recognise in them brothers and sisters who have walked the same road. And in this familiarity it finds, still today, an invitation and a hope.

We present a list of the holiness of the Salesian Family, updated to the beginning of 2026.