John Bosco
August 16, 1815 — January 31, 1888 · Feast day: January 31
John Bosco saw Turin's destitute youth flooding into prisons and factories and answered with a new kind of education. From a single borrowed room in 1844, he built schools, workshops, and oratories — gathering thousands of street boys not with threats but with reason, religion, and affection. That method, which he called the Preventive System, became the founding charter of the Salesians, a global order still operating in his name.