Mother Maddalena must have known St. John Bosco when she lived in Italy.  Blessed Michael Rua – the successor of St. John Bosco - wrote to Mother Maddalena in Omaha in 1894:

Welcome is your letter and most welcome are also the news and the confidence you have in me in telling me all these things.  I am delighted also to know that you were fortunate enough to have had an interview with our Venerable Father and founder, Don Bosco. And I am sure that, from his conversation, you could appreciate his ardent charity and zeal for the salvation of souls, especially of the youth…