The founder of the Salesian Order, he was born in extreme poverty in Northern Italy in 1815 his father dying when he was aged two. He was ordained a priest of the Turin diocese in 1841 and found his true vocation as an evangelist to working class young men in the city; the Turin seminary Rector persuaded him to abandon his dream of serving as a foreign missionary to concentrate on what was to be his life's work. In the poor district of Valdocco he founded an institute, a kind of pseudo-orphanage, which at first housed forty young men. Here he opened workshops to give training in trades: shoemaking and tailoring. By 1856 the number of inmates had grown to 150, with 500 others attached to dependencies served by ten priests. St John Bosco's methods and personality were somewhat similar to those of St Philip Neri in Rome some 300 years earlier: a deep spirituality, a charismatic personality, an appreciation of the need to provide recreation and fun to go alongside serious work and spiritual exercises. He also had the enviable ability to rein in rebellious teenagers by charitable persuasion rather than by ranting. In 1859 he formed what was to be the Salesian Order (named after St Francis de Sales, Bishop of Geneva +1622) approved in 1874. There are now thousands of Salesian brothers world-wide, concentrating on the same pastoral and educational work as their founder. A great believer in the motto "God will provide' he set about building the great church of the Sacred Heart in Rome (near Termini station) with no financial guarantees whatsoever; he was not disappointed. He survived an assassination attempt to live until 1888, when his funeral rites and procession were attended by some ¾ of the inhabitants of Turin. He was canonised in 1934.