2. Corrigan to Scalabrini¹¹

         New York, October 28, 1887

Most Venerated Monsignor,

For several weeks I have not written to Your Excellency to thank you for your most welcome letter and for your kindness in sending the Catholic Catechist. There were various reasons for this silence. First of all I wanted to hear from two Italian priests how we could introduce that magazine here. So far, they have not given me an answer, and unfortunately one is now even dead. For me and for the Italians of this City, it has been an irreparable immense loss.

            Father Emiliano Kirner,¹² a Pallottine religious of German birth, who had resided for many years in Piedmont, was a true apostle for the Italian immigrants. In the short span of three years, he did more than I would ever dare to hope. He built a large and most beautiful church, a presbytery quite modest, and in the meantime he gathered and brought to the holy sacraments the five thousand Neapolitans and Calabrians around him.

            Recently he went to Italy, and some Sisters were to come shortly, before Christmas, to educate the children. To this end, he had built a parochial school five stories high. But a few days ago this building suddenly collapsed and the pastor remained so wounded that the following day he died.

            He had promised that with joy he would make use of the Catholic Catechist and would have requested copies for the children of the school.

            The Lord has taken him with our greatest sorrow and we have no one like him to whom we can entrust so many souls!

            Father Emiliano was often talking about the great difference existing between the regions where, as Your Excellency well said, “the spirit of St. Charles Borromeo is still felt,” and the southern regions of Italy. Such distinction is right and I accept it without doubt.

            But the sad condition of the immigrants is always such that it moves one to sympathy. These 90,000 Italians living in the city may not want to attend our churches. We don’t propose to build churches exclusively for them. In the meantime Protestant gold attracts them en masse and eats them up. Up to now, with the exception of this foreign priest, none of the sixty or seventy priests who have been here has done much for their own people. We have a so-called Italian church, but it is really Irish. It is the Church of the Franciscan Fathers. The other Italian priests came to America seeking their fortune.

            I enclose L.150 for some copies of the Cathechist. Please pray for our Italians and keep up for us your precious benevolence. I remain

Your Excellency’s Most Devoted Servant,

Michael Augustine, Archbishop

P.S. If Your Excellency will establish a seminary for foreign missions, gladly I will support it, at least to the point of paying the tuition and board for two or three students. The appeals for charity to our faithful are many and I could not expect help from them. Next year we have to start the construction of the Diocesan Seminary.

            Here we are still at the beginning and have to create everything that is needed: churches, schools, hospitals, etc. While our faithful are engaged in doing all this for themselves, it is difficult to ask them the necessary means to help the Italians, especially when they don’t want to do anything. Father Emiliano also has succeeded only with the effective help of the Irish.