MAGIC DAYS! Operating from Bosco Youth Centre, Fr Silvio Mantelli, a Salesian priest who is also a professional magician, together with another magician friend from Italy, Mr Victor Balli, spent six days presenting a total of ten most entertaining magie shows in several catholic schools and parishes of Johannesburg Diocese. Just as the founder of the Salesians, St John Bosco, used to do, Fr Silvio delights in gathering young people for some joyful entertainment, in the context of a little bit of religion. For him, magic is an occasion for ministry and evangelisation. He has toured many countries on all the continents, offering his mort entertaining shows free of charge; all for the love of God in young people. In a whirlwind 23-day tour of this part of the world, he presented a total of 31shows to over 13,000 people in Cape Town, Joburg, Swaziland and Lesotho. However that is nowhere near his record, which he established last year when he presented five shows in a giant Salesian school in the Phillipines totalling 35,000 pupils in one day! Fr Sergio just loves to encounter new young people around the world, and his magic is understood in any language. "As I give my show to them, they are the ones who entertain me", he says. Even though his command of the English language is not (as yet) what he would like it to be, his joyful message of the love of God for youth was evident, and the young people in Cape Town, Johannesburg, Manzini and Maputo loved him and his tricks! Fr Silvio, who is also known by the stage name, Mago Sales, funds his own trips around the world, especially to mission countries, by means of the takings from shows he gives in Italy. And frequently, being moved by the needs out in the missions, he makes considerable donations towards the work of the missionaries he visits.