Dominic Savio was born in 1842, the son of a very poor blacksmith. By the age of four, he knew all his prayers and could be found kneeling in prayer; at five, he was an altarboy. When he made his First Holy Communion, at age seven, he chose a motto: “Death, but not sin!” And he kept it always.
Even at this early age, he practised heroic virtue. In 1854, he went to Turin and became a pupil at St John Bosco’s Oratory. Here he worked, studied, played and prayed for three years. The other students recognised that he was different from the way he prayed. On his part, he loved all the boys and worried lest they lose the grace of God by sinning. Without being pushy, he managed to intervene in fights or less than virtuous activities to remind the boys of what was right and good.
Sometimes he tended to take his decision to be a saint too seriously. Don Bosco put paid to that, saying that serving God is the way to true happiness and it should show. Dominic took the lesson to heart and became an apostle of cheerfulness.
Dominic was permitted to receive his Lord daily, a rare privilege. In all things he took his life to Mary asking her to keep his heart pure. Never in robust health, Dominic became seriously ill and died in 1857. He is the patron of choirboys and the false
