Introduction

Having turned fifty, and having already decided – through a very normal process which, however linear in appearance, was shamelessly passionate – what to do with my life, I am faced with something completely new, undoubtedly a jewel, as it is so sober, discrete and inconspicuous, but, at the same time, unique. It is just as I like them. I examine this jewel with an increasing curiosity, attention and interest, and I study its deepest features.
I already knew it existed, and had known since my childhood, but I had not particularly noticed it before.
It was always next to – and almost in the shadow of – a bigger, gaudier diamond – and quite valuable, too – and it was this diamond that fascinated me…

What really happened?
Maria Domenica Mazzarello, co-founder, together with Don Bosco, of the Institute of the Daughters of Mary the Helper of Christians, lived long in the shadow of the “great” saint. She was not even recognised as co-founder of the Institute, as if by doing so, the greatness of the Saint might have been lessened.
Only her Beatification in 1935 granted this reality the permanent and infallible seal of the Church: without Maria Domenica Mazzarello, Don Bosco’s idea – doing for girls what he had already done for boys – would not have been brought into fruition or, in any case, would have taken quite a different shape. She is, then, the co-founder of the Institute of the Daughters of Mary the Helper of Christians.

The image of Maria Mazzarello that we have been given during our education in the houses of the Daughters of Mary the Helper of Christians, was that of a “saintly” nun, the first of the Salesian Sisters. The official iconography provided a very static and strict portrait, which did nothing to rivet the interest of an adolescent girl. And when we used to say – in a burst of sincerity, with a good dose of reverential fear – that we preferred Don Bosco to her, we were told that it was simply a matter of “psychology”: as females, we would naturally be more attracted to a male figure…
To put it more simply, none of us girls, in those years, had fallen in love with Mother Mazzarello, maybe because we did not come to know her.
Now in the light of deeper historical research, starting with the publication of her letters, we see a “new” woman, who was deeply rooted in her time, but very much modern for any time, if we extrapolate some universal values that, as such, go beyond time and space from her human existence in the context of a well-defined historical and cultural context.

Her life does not present any flashes of brilliance, or any pedagogic thought of apparent interest. Her life was lived fully, according to God’s will, in a relationship with the world that gained her the definition of a person who was “Salesian by instinct”, as she acted as a Salesian even before meeting Don Bosco.