THE VENERABLE DON BOSCO
career; and to win the concurrence of Providence, we will dedicate it to the Sacred Heart."
Don Bosco might well have shrunk from so arduous a charge; for the foundation and support of his institutes and orphanages, now nearly eighty, with his South American missions, already consumed incredible sums; but the command of Pius IX was enough. The holy pontiff bought the ground and initiated the work ere he was called to the heavenly reward of his labors.
Leo XIII, on his accession, confirmed the mandate of his departed predecessor, and Don Bosco set out with a tremulous heart, but with confidence in Mary, Help of Christian, to collect funds for the magnificent edifice already planned. The Cardinal Archbishop of Turin had appealed to all Italy and the various provinces strove to rival one another in generosity. The construction occupied six years and cost three millions. It is a majestic temple of divine worship, worthy of the Sacred Heart of Jesus.
This noble basilica was the chief center of Don Bosco's activity after his restoration to health. Three years more of devoted labor, of study and attention to the finer details, for which his extraordinary knowledge and taste in all points of ecclesiastical architecture fitted him, and he had the happiness of witnessing its completion. Its solemn consecration to the Sacred Heart by the Cardinal Vicar, on May 14, 1887, was coincident, as Don Bosco had desired, with Leo XIII's sacer-
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