You're listening to Catholic Sprouts, the daily podcast for Catholic kids that strives to plant seeds of faith.

Hey there, Spouts. Today is Friday, January 31st, 2020. It is also the feast day of St. John Bosco.

So St. John Bosco is an incredible saint, especially for youth. St. John Bosco was born very poor in the 1800s in Italy,

but from a very early age, he loved the church and he was very devoted to prayer and to God.

He began having vivid dreams when he was only nine years old, and in these dreams, a man and a woman would appear to him and they would have with them some very poor-looking youth. And they began to tell him about the way

that he would need to minister to these children and how he would reach them through love.

So at a very early age also, St. John Bosco began to

wonder how he could start to evangelize and spread the faith. One day, he witnessed a traveling circus

and he saw how the tricks of the performers just mesmerized the children. So he decided that he would

learn how to do some circus acts and he would put on a

little show. So this is what he did. He performed as a circus performer and after he had the

children's attention, he then recited a homily and led them in prayer. Now doing this, realized in

St. John Bosco a calling to the priesthood. He was very poor.

He worked many jobs, but eventually he was ordained a priest. As a priest, he was sent to a large city,

and in that city he saw that many of the parents were busy off working and the young boys were left to wander the

streets and oftentimes got into crime. After they committed a crime, they were sent to a prison

where its circumstances were very harsh and bleak. So he felt called to realize what he had seen

in his dreams as a child and minister to these poor boys. So he did.

He went to the places where they worked or the places they hung out. He taught them with love.

He ministered to them. And eventually with the help of his mother, he began to set up safe places

for them to live and schools for them to learn.

He also really worked on calling them to the priesthood, if you saw that as their vocational

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