Out of the muck and mire, a rose blooms .

Saint Dominic Savio was born of very poor but holy peasant stock, one of ten children. His parents were from Castelnuovo D’Asti, ten miles outside Turin. When things got desperate they were forced to leave, to find work in a small village outside of Chieri called Riva. There on April 2, 1842, a boy child was born to Charles and Brigid Savio, whom they baptized Dominic. When Dominic was two years old, the family moved once again, to a village near their home town of Castelnuovo d’Asti, Murialdo.

Right from his earliest years, Saint Dominic Savio showed clear signs of piety. His parents said he never gave them cause for the slightest worry, was always obedient and thoughtful of their feelings. At barely four years of age, he swiftly learned his prayers, and could be observed reciting them alone, morning, noon, and night. Deeply attached to his mother, he only left her side to go to a small hideaway where he could continue praying unnoticed.

He never began eating without saying Grace. One day, his family unwittingly began eating without first having prayed. Little Dominic cried out, "Daddy, we haven’t asked God to bless our meal yet." He then proceeded to make the Sign of the Cross and began the prayer the family always recited before eating. All joined in, and after they finished eating, they said the Angelus (as was their custom, morning, noon and night). On another occasion, a guest at their dinner table began eating without first saying Grace. Young Dominic rose and left the table, retiring to a corner of the room. When he was later questioned, as to his strange behavior, he said, "I didn’t dare sit at table with someone who eats like an animal."

In his biography of this little Saint, Don Bosco speaks not only of the extraordinary Grace bestowed upon Saint Dominic Savio, but attributed much of his virtuous life to his parents and their tireless commitment to bring him the treasures of the Church. Their example, their daily, ongoing living out of the Faith, their praying the Rosary and the Angelus as a family, their devout attendance at Mass, their fidelity to the Sacraments, their faithful teaching of the Catechism, bringing Dominic the stark reality of sin with its ultimate destruction of the soul, and the luminous rays of piety with its eternal reward in Heaven, molded him into the Saint he would become.