Blessed Michael Rua

Who was Blessed Michael Rua?

Blessed Michael Rua was the boy who grew up to carry St. John Bosco's work across the world. Born in Turin on June 9, 1837, he was one of the first Salesians, Don Bosco's right hand for some thirty years, and from 1888 his first successor as head of the Salesian Society. He died in Turin on April 6, 1910. When Pope Paul VI beatified him in 1972, he summed up his life in one image: Don Rua "made the spring into a current, a river."

The life of Michael Rua

The boy who went halves

Michael was the last of nine children. His father worked at a government arms factory in Turin and died when the boy was eight, and his widowed mother kept the family going in their small apartment there. Michael met Don Bosco as a child. The story the Salesians love best comes from those years. The priest held out his open left hand and pretended to cut it in half with his right. "We two will go halves in everything," he said. Michael did not understand what he meant. He spent the rest of his life finding out.

He joined the oratory at Valdocco as a teenager, in the years when Dominic Savio was also among Don Bosco's boys. On March 25, 1855, he made his first vows as one of the first members of the new Society of St. Francis de Sales, and in 1859, at twenty-two, he became its first spiritual director. He was ordained a priest in 1860.

Don Bosco's other self

In 1863, at twenty-six, Don Rua was sent to open the first Salesian house outside Turin, a small seminary at Mirabello. Two years later he was back at Valdocco as Don Bosco's vicar, running the house, the accounts and much of the daily work. In July 1868 he fell ill with peritonitis, and the doctors gave him hours to live. Don Bosco, according to the account kept by the Salesians, told him, "Listen, Don Rua, even if you were thrown out the window just as you are, I assure you that you won't die." He was on his feet within days.

He was also the first director of the Salesian Sisters, the Daughters of Mary Help of Christians, co-founded by Don Bosco and St. Maria Mazzarello. He later said he learned more from watching Don Bosco, even in the humblest actions, than from reading any treatise on the spiritual life.

Rector Major

Don Bosco died in January 1888, and Don Rua took his place. He governed the order for twenty-two years, and he traveled constantly to visit its houses across Europe and beyond, including a pilgrimage to the Holy Land in 1908. The years brought blows: a Salesian priest murdered in 1895, Bishop Luigi Lasagna and others killed in a train accident months later, the French laws of 1901 that closed Salesian houses in France, and a slanderous school scandal in 1907 that turned much of Italy against the order. Under all of it, the Society kept growing. According to Santi e Beati, it went from about 700 members in 64 houses to some 4,000 religious in 341 houses in 30 countries.

The Salesians called him "the living rule" for his austere and exact life. He died in Turin on April 6, 1910, and was buried near Don Bosco.

The beatification of Blessed Michael Rua

His cause opened in Turin in 1922. Pope Pius XII declared him Venerable in 1953, and Pope Paul VI beatified him in St. Peter's Square on October 29, 1972. The miracles accepted for the beatification are approved; we have not found a reliable published account of them and so we do not describe them. His sudden recovery in 1868 is a reported grace, which his brothers credited to Don Bosco's prayers.

In the homily, Paul VI called him "il fedelissimo," the most faithful of Don Bosco's sons, "and therefore the most humble and at the same time the most courageous."

Symbols of Blessed Michael Rua in art

Don Rua lived in the age of photography, and most of his images follow the photographs. Look for a very thin, stooped priest with a long, hollow-cheeked face and a kind smile, in a black cassock and biretta. He is often shown at Don Bosco's side or just behind him, the way he spent his life, and sometimes among the boys of the oratory. In Salesian churches his statue or painting is usually placed near Don Bosco's.

Where Blessed Michael Rua is honored

His remains rest in the crypt of the Basilica of Mary Help of Christians at Valdocco in Turin, the church Don Bosco built in honor of Our Lady, Help of Christians. Salesian schools, parishes and youth centers around the world keep his memorial on October 29.

Praying with Blessed Michael Rua

We have not found a widely used traditional prayer to Blessed Michael Rua with a citable origin, so we do not print one. Ask his prayers in your own words, especially for priests and religious, for those who must carry on another's work, and for young people far from home. Let us ask Blessed Michael Rua to help us be faithful in small things, as he was, and to love the young as Don Bosco did.