History of the Scalabrinian Congregation Vol

EDITED BY MARIO FRANCESCONI, C. S. HISTORY OF THE SCALABRINIAN CONGREGATION VOL. II (1888-1895) ISTITUTO STORICO SCALABRINIANO HISTORY OF THE SCALABRINIAN CONGREGATION VOLUME II THE SCALABRINIAN MISSIONARIES IN NORTH AMERICA 1888 - 1895 by Mario Francesconi, c.s. Translated from Italian by Salvatore Zappulla. PROVINCE OF ST. CHARLES BORROMEO-SCALABRINIANS SCALABRINIAN DEVELOPMENT OFFICE CENTER FOR MIGRATION STUDIES NEW YORK 1983 ISTITUTO STORICO SCALABRINIANO 2021 Reviewed and transcribed in digital format by Peter P. Polo, cs Layout and reprint by Graziano Battistella, cs Chapter I - “The Italian bill onContents emigration” 5 Chapter II - The first years of the congregation of the missionaries of st. Charles 15 The General Administration 15 The Management of the Mother House 15 The Mother House of Via Francesco Torta 19 Plan for an Italian-American Seminary 20 Perpetual Vows 24 The Patron Saint and the Cardinal Protector 31 The Departure for the Missions 33 Sensitization Work 37 Chapter III - The first Scalabrinian mission in New York 45 The Church of the Most Precious Blood 45 The Church of St. Joachim 55 The Arrival of St. Francis Xavier Cabrini and Her Nuns 71 The Cristoforo Colombo Hospital 85 Chapter IV - The beginning of the Boston, Pittsburgh Providence, New Haven and New Orleans missions 91 The Parish of the Sacred Heart in Boston, Mass. (1888-1895) 91 The Parish of St. Peter in Pittsburgh, PA (1889-1894) 99 The Parish of the Holy Ghost in Providence, R.I. (1888-1894) 102 The Parish of St. Michael the Archangel in New Haven, Connecticut (1889-1895) 106 The Mission in New Orleans, LA.(1889-1894) 109 Chapter V 133 - The beginning of the missions in Buffalo, Cincinnati, Bridgeport, Cleveland, Kansas City, Our Lady of Pompei in New York, Hartford, Meriden and Erie 133 The Parish of St. Anthony of Padua in Buffalo, N.Y. (1890-1893) 133 The Parish of the Sacred Heart in Cincinnati, Ohio (18891895) 135 The Mission of Bridgeport, Connecticut (1891-1896) 139 The Parish of the Sacred Rosary in Cleveland, Ohio (1891-1896) 140 The Parish of the Holy Rosary in Kansas City, MO (1891-1895) 146 The Parish of Our Lady of Pompei in New York (1892-1896) 148 The Mission of Hartford and Meriden, Connecticut (1892-1898) 152 The Mission of Erie, Pennsylvania (1891-1894) 154 Appendix I Correspondence between Bishop Scalabrini and Father Zaboglio 157 Appendix II 285 Correspondence between Bishop Scalabrini and Archbishop Corrigan 285 Appendix III 323 Documents of the Events Regarding the Church of the Most Precious Blood in New York (1893 - 1894) 323 I - Documents gathered by father Vicentini 325 II - Documents kept in the general archives of the Franciscan Friars Minor Observants in Rome 356 Appendix IV 365 The Italians in New York 367 CHAPTER I “THE ITALIAN BILL ON EMIGRATION” hile the first Scalabrinian Missionaries, sent to the United WStates to help Italian immigrants, were beginning their work amid numerous difficulties, Bishop Scalabrini continued to struggle to eradicate some of the worst evils facing Italian Emigrants. In early November 1888, he published a sixty-page booklet entitled “The Bill on Italian Emigration - Observations and Proposals of Bishop John Scalabrini, Bishop of Piacenza.” The booklet took the form of an open letter addressed to Paolo Carcano, Undersecretary of the Ministry of Finances and the Author’s schoolmate at the Liceo Volta of Como.1 The Bill had been introduced as a “special law” in the Chamber of Deputies by the Prime Minister and Minister of the Interior, Frances- co Crispi on December 15, 1887. One provision of the Bill was that all immigration agents had to obtain a government license and furnish bond before beginning operations. It also imposed a penalty on all persons illegally engaged in emigration operations and in enrolling migrant workers without permission. The Bill recognized the freedom of all citizens to emigrate, except when they had not yet served in the armed forces and they were about to emigrate at the age of military service. At the same time, it empowered the Minister of the Interior to limit the enrollment of migratory workers. On May 3, 1888, a Parliament Committee presided over by Rocco De Zerbi introduced a counterproposal intended to modify the government bill. “In a more liberal sense, it substantially aimed at es- tablishing the freedom of choosing and promoting emigration. This proposal judged the agents’ work less harshly. It allowed them the 1 For a wider treatment see: Antonio Perotti, “La Società Italiana di Fronte alle Migrazioni di Massa,” Special Issue of Studi Emigrazione, V. 11-12 (1968), pp. 36-54. The same volume contains the entire booklet by Bishop Scalabrini, “The Italian Bill on Migration” (Piacenza, 1888) on pp. 231-257. We have preferred to quote the booklet from this special issue of the above-mentioned magazine rather than from the original edition, because it is more readily available to our readers 5 THE ITALIAN BILL ON EMIGRATION freedom to encourage migration and to enroll migrants, while lessen- ing the penalties for violations.”2 The Bishop of Piacenza intervened a month before the debate was to begin in the Chamber of Deputies in December, 1888. The result of the debate was that Zerbi’s bill, slightly changed, became law. Bishop Scalabrini, “a Bishop who is interested in social affairs and in parliamentary bills,” as he characterized himself, was more favor- able to Zerbi’s counterproposal, and criticized the original bill for “considering the great cosmic and human migration phenomenon as an abnormal event rather than as a natural right.” “The Bill .... reveals more than anything else the preoccupation of the Minister of the Interior who looks with regret at the fields abandoned by a great number of peasants, which increases every year, sees agricultural production and prop- erty diminishing, and our agricultural crises worsening. But rather than show- ing the foresight of the statesman who looks far ahead and does not hinder the migratory movement, he directs it instead, so that it becomes a source of well-being and power for our country.”3 In other words, Bishop Scalabrini continued to uphold the freedom to migrate while opposing “the freedom to make other people migrate in order to exploit them.” For this reason, he strongly criticized even the counterproposal, which became law, because it “allowed the agents to enroll migratory workers.” “I believe,” he explained, “that this concession, perhaps justified in theory, becomes very detrimental in practice, to the point of invalidating many good provisions of the same law.”4 He would have allowed the agents to be nothing more than mid- dlemen between the shipping companies and the migrants, and the agencies nothing more than information offices. He would have even tolerated that they “should try to convince the doubtful.”5 In practice migration agents fitted the definition he had formulated about them: “They are more vile than thieves and more cruel than assassins, since they push to ruination so many desperate people.”6 2 Fernando Manzotti, La polemica sull’emigrazione nell’Italia unita, (Milano, 1962) p. 86. 3 Giovanni Battista Scalabrini, Il disegno di legge, etc., p. 234. 4 Ibid. 5 Ibid. 6 Ibid., p. 235 6 THE ITALIAN BILL ON EMIGRATION Agents were in fact enrollers, and “the enrollment of migrants is substantially an evil thing, since it alters the function of the social phenomenon called migration, and makes it deviate from its natural purposes and goals. Migration, like all selection, must be spontaneous in order to be helpful: if not, instead of being an improvement of the social organism and a beneficial centrifugal and centripetal movement giving impulse and equilibrium to wishes, it becomes a tiring effort and a consuming fever.”7 The Bishop was repraoched for making “an abstract and moral- istic distinction” between spontaneous migration (considered good) and stimulated or artificial migration (considered bad).8 But he himself did not intend to make an absolute distinction: “Social events are rarely entirely good or entirely bad; but they can be good or bad according to circumstances. Thus it may be that the enlistment of migrants, bad and condemnable in general, can be- come good in certain cases .... But what can be good as an exception, can be bad as a norm.”9 He was judging facts: “I am more inclined to believe facts than beautiful words.”10 Just because he upheld “the freedom to migrate” as against “the freedom to induce people to migrate,” one cannot reproach him for not taking into account the fact that as Manzotti says, “even from what is irrational in the spirit of adventure, positive consequences may derive.”11 Manzotti however immediately added: “But Scalabri- ni’s principal merit consists in adding practical interests to theoreti- cal ones. He fervently imparts intelligent direction to a valid work of protection.”12 We wish to underline this merit not only for his “work of predi- lection,” that is, the work of the Congregation of the Missionaries of St. Charles and of the Society of St. Raphael, but also for his practical suggestions for eliminating the evil of migrant enrollment - one of 7 Ibid. 8 Cfr. Fernando Manzotti, op. cit., p. 89. 9 Giovanni Battista Scalabrini, Il disegno di legge, etc. pp. 237-238. 10 Ibid., p. 238. 11 Fernando Manzotti, op. cit., p. 89 12 Ibid. 7 THE ITALIAN BILL ON EMIGRATION the most painful of our migration practices until the law of 1901 was enacted. But, above all, for having provided on a world-wide basis protection for the immigrants once they reached their destinations. “Even a good law is not enough,” he said, “to see to it that this great and com- plex migration problem fulfills the worthy social ends of Divine Providence, unless it is supported by all those wise public and private institutions and by all those civil and religious provisions which have produced excellent results among the people for whom they were established.”13 “Spurred on by these considerations, I began to work so that my poor word, corroborated by my example, would be more efficacious...

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