🇬🇧 We share with the whole Association the address given by Borja Pérez last Saturday, 9 May, following his nomination as World Coordinator 2026–2032.
Intervento Borja Perez dopo nomina 9 maggio 2026 ENGÇ
Intervento Borja Perez dopo nomina 9 maggio 2026 FRA
Intervento Borja Perez dopo nomina 9 maggio 2026 IT
Intervento Borja Perez dopo nomina 9 maggio 2026 POR
Intervento Borja Perez dopo nomina 9 maggio 2026 SPA
Sacrofano, 9 May 2026
Dear Rector Major, dear Antonio, dear members of the World Council, dear Fr Pascual, brothers and sisters Salesian Cooperators present here at the Congress and those following us from home: I receive this nomination somewhat overwhelmed by emotion, but with a heart full of gratitude and, at the same time, with a deep sense of smallness. I thank you for the trust placed in me and I recognise that this service is in no way the result of my merits, but a call that Providence addresses to me through the Association and the Salesian Family.
I wish to remember with affection and respect the other brothers who offered their availability to carry out this service. Each of them brings talents, experience and love for the mission that enrich our Association. I feel like a brother among brothers, and I know that I will continue to need their closeness and their prayer.
Today I renew my desire to place my talents —whether few or many— at the service of the Association and the Salesian Family, with a spirit of availability and fidelity to the charism that Don Bosco entrusted to us. Our Project of Apostolic Life is not just a text: it is a path that guides us, a call to live our vocation with authenticity in the midst of the world, along the journey of life, in the company of Jesus, like the disciples of Emmaus.
I take on this service with the certainty that the Association is not an end in itself, but a humble and precious instrument of God’s plan for young people, especially the poorest. For this reason, my first intention is to look and listen, as Fr Fabio suggested to us this year in the Strenna: to look and listen to the Spirit, to look and listen to the Church, to look and listen to the young, and to look at and listen to all of you.
My gratitude today is especially for Antonio. You have guided the Association in these years with great competence, but above all with great heart and pastoral charity. You have helped build a more fraternal World Council and a more fraternal Association, which is undoubtedly the way for us, as SSCC, to bear witness to the Gospel in the world with a Salesian style and to make this world a more fraternal place.
I trust that, together, we will be able to continue building a living Association, co-responsible, open to the signs of the times and faithful to Don Bosco’s prophetic intuition. May he and Mary Help of Christians accompany us, sustain us and teach us to dream with courage the future that God desires for the young people of the world.
Thank you from the heart, and I count on your prayer in this commitment.
Borja Pérez