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From the year 1846, when four of Don Bosco's pupils had become divinity students, to 1865, what progress! A visitor speaking of one of the boarding schools of four hundred pupils, with its complete course of classical studies, adds: "About a fourth of these scholars enter the Salesian Congregation or are ordained." The first priest from the schools was ordained in 1857—a waif who had fled almost a wreck from cruel and inhuman parents to the shelter of Don Bosco's fatherly heart. His talents were found so extraordinary and combined with such natural energy, love of study and aspiration after holiness of life, that Don Bosco gave every facility to his laudable ambitions, became his director, instructor and father; and his labor of love was well rewarded, for eventually his protege became one of the most distinguished and saintly of the Turin clergy.

As years elapsed and vocations multiplied, Don Bosco, enlightened by the Holy Spirit, saw a society of priests shaping itself almost unconsciously under his very eyes into a sacerdotal phalanx destined to make war upon sin and worldliness, to conquer Christ's enemies, wrest from them their young captives, and bring thousands