Don Bosco Youth Centre Oratory

The Don Bosco Testaccio Youth Centre Oratory offers sports, workshops, group activities and playtime for children aged 8 to 18.

On the dedicated pages of the site you will find details of our proposals, from sport to internship opportunities and the call for National Civil Service.

Come and meet us: we are at 57 Via Bodoni, every day from 16:30 to 19:30!

A bit of history

Initially, oratories were small places of worship where the faithful gathered to pray (the term comes from the Latin “orare”, to pray).

The first oratory in the modern sense was created by St Philip Neri around 1550, with the intention of creating a community of religious and lay people united in a bond of mutual charity in the style of the apostles. In 1575 Pope Gregory XIII erected the Congregation of the Oratory and granted it the church of Santa Maria in Vallicella, which thus became the site of the first oratory. The aims of the Oratory of St Philip Neri were prayer, involving ordinary and cultured men in reading the Bible, and the education of boys.

In the wake of Philip Neri, the idea of John Bosco was born. In 1841 he met young people in the sacristy of the church of St Francis of Assisi in Turin for the first of a series of prayer meetings. His educational passion for young people led him to get closer and closer to young people, among them Dominic Savio. The first crowded gatherings did not have a fixed place. It was not until Easter 1846 that the Oratory settled under a canopy with a piece of grass, the Pinardi canopy in Valdocco.

Since Don Bosco's example, the Oratory has increasingly become a place of aggregation and formation, both religious and human. Structures were equipped and enlarged, as well as spreading throughout Italy, with a greater diffusion in the North. In particular, the Archbishop of Milan Card. Andrea Carlo Ferrari promoted the creation of a men's oratory and a women's oratory in every parish.