PA R T I R E P E R M O R I R E
PA R T I R E P E R M O R I R E
PA R T I R E P E R M O R I R E
The Scalabrinan Order L eaves Rhode Island by Grace D unham
O
n April 7th, Father Charles Zanoni will have been a priest for fifty years. The son of Italian immigrants, he was born in Melrose Park, just outside Chicago. When his parents emigrated from Italy in 1920, the Priest at his local parish, also an Italian, gave his dad a job digging graves at the church cemetery. When the Depression hit, his dad didn’t lose his job. The Italian priest had promised that no matter what, he would never turn away an Italian man who had a wife and children to care for. This priest was a Scalabrinian. Because of him, Father Zanoni became a Scalabrinian too. The Scalabrinians, officially known as the Congregation of the Missionaries of St. Charles, are a Catholic order—meaning that, like the more widely known Franciscans or Dominicans, they are a religious organization within the Catholic Church defined by its own traditions and objectives. The Scalabrinians were founded in Italy in 1887 at a time of massive Italian emigration, with the aim of assisting Italian migrants both spiritually and materially in their transition to the New World. Soon after their founding, the first Scalabrinian Missionaries were sent to Boston and New York, where the largest Italian immigrant communities in America were rapidly expanding. They arrived in Providence in 1889. By 1920, when Rhode Island had the highest percentage of Italian-born residents of any state in America, the Scalabrinian Fathers staffed six of Rhode Island’s nine ethnically Italian Catholic Churches. This spring, the Scalabrinians will say goodbye to two of their three remaining parishes here. One of these two churches is St. Rocco’s, where Father Zanoni has been for the last nine years. Established in 1903 as one of Rhode Island’s original Scalabrinian Parishes,
St. Rocco’s is in Johnston, which—with over 45% of its residents claiming Italian heritage—is the most Italian-American municipality in the country. Before St. Rocco’s, Father Zanoni worked in Toronto, and then in New York City and Washington D.C. In Toronto, the majority of the parishioners were first-generation Italians who had fled WWII after their towns were destroyed by bombs. St. Rocco’s—despite its overwhelmingly Italian community—has very different demographics: Italian-Americans who, for the most part, overcame the hurdles of “integration” two, three, even four generations ago. With no more Italian migrants in need of spiritual guidance, the Scalabrinians have expanded their scope. Today, there are Scalabrinian ministries in 35 countries and five continents. In Mexico, Venezuela, Columbia, Haiti, Indonesia, the Philippines, and Vietnam the Scalabrinians have established vocations to educate priests who will do for their countrymen what the first Scalabrinians once did for the Italians. Father Zanoni doesn’t know where he’ll be going when he leaves Rhode Island in July, but wherever it is, it won’t be like Johnston. By the year 1900, 8 million Italians had emigrated from Italy and 4 million of those had gone to America. Though one-sixth of Americans already identified as Catholic, Irish clergy largely controlled the church. Despite sharing their Roman Catholic Faith, Irish and Italian religious traditions often differed to the point of animosity. In the eyes of the Irish, Italian Catholicism—with its elaborate and often decadent feasts and festivals—verged on the folkloric. As more Italians arrived in America, gathering in centralized and
homogenous communities, they encountered not only widespread racial discrimination but also a religious environment devoid of cultural security. After an epiphany in a Milan train station, John Baptist Scalabrini—then Bishop of Piacenza—became deeply invested in the spiritual welfare of these Italians immigrant communities. As the story goes, the masses of migrants huddled in the station’s vast waiting room triggered a profound missionary urge in Scalabrini: “Thousands upon thousands of our brothers live defenseless in another country,” he wrote in his 1887 book, Italian Migration in America, “Objects of exploitation that is often unpunished, without the comfort of a friendly word, then I confess that I blush with shame, I feel humiliated as a priest and as an Italian, and I ask myself again: what can be done to help them?” In November of 1887, with the approval and encouragement of Pope Leo XIII, Bishop Scalabrini founded the Congregation of the Missionaries of St. Charles and in 1888, Bishop Scalabrini recruited his first ten missionaries to send to America. In Rhode Island, the Italian population had been growing exponentially: records in 1850 showed 25 Italian-born residents; by 1900, there were almost 10,000. And so in 1889, with the approval of Rev. Matthew Harkins, the Irish-American Bishop of Providence, a group of Italian immigrants established Rhode Island’s first ethnically Italian parish—the Church of the Holy Ghost. Recognizing the need for spiritual leaders in the Italian community, Bishop Harkins wrote to the Scalabrinians. As the Italian community continued to expand, Rev. Harkins established nine more Italians parishes—six of them staffed by Scalabrinians.
On October 19th of 1901, Bishop Scalabrini came to Providence for the consecration of the site of what was to be the new church of the Holy Ghost on the Western-most edge of Federal Hill, built to accommodate the growing parish. Scalabrini’s time in Providence was just one stop on his American tour: in 100 days, he gave 340 speeches and confirmed more than 22,000 people in similarly Italian enclaves across the Northeast and Midwest. On his third and final day in Providence, Bishop Scalabrini confirmed 536 children. Mass was so crowded that worshippers poured out onto Atwells Avenue. Come July, St. Bartholomew’s, in Silver Lake, will be Rhode Island’s only remaining Scalabrinian Parish. When Arthur Urbano—a professor of Theology at Providence College— was growing up in Silver Lake in the 1980s, St. Bartholomew’s was the center of his and his family’s world. His grandmother, who is 96, lives two blocks away from the house where she was born and has worshipped at St. Bartholomew’s for her entire life. For most of the 20th century, Silver Lake was a predominantly Italian-American neighborhood. Urbano’s family has been there since the 1890s—his grandfather, who was a third generation Italian-American, claims his grandfather (Arthur’s great-great-grandfather) was the second Italian to arrive there. “As an elementary school student I thought the whole world was Italian,” said Urbano. “Everyone I knew was, so I thought everyone else had to be too.” But Urbano’s Silver Lake was decidedly different than the Silver Lake of his grandparents’, let alone that of his great-