- Part 2 Correspondence
- 4 Bishop Scalabrini and Archbishop Corrigan (1887–1902)
- 20. Scalabrini to Corrigan Piacenza January 23, 1889
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20.
Scalabrini to Corrigan45
Piacenza January
23, 1889
Most Reverend Excellency:
May I introduce to you the two new Missionaries
who are destined, as agreed with the Congregation of Propaganda, for the
Italian colony over there. They are accompanied by two good lay catechists who
will offer their services for the House and Church.46
I
fervently recommend them to the fatherly benevolence of Your Excellency. They
are two good priests, of average intelligence, but filled with piety. Father
Giacomo Annovazzi has left the comforts of a rich family in order to dedicate
himself to our work. He is a dear young man.
They
will depend entirely on your will, their good Father and Pastor, and they will
consider it their duty, indeed their glory, to humbly follow even your smallest
desires.
The
Sisters destined for New York
are the Missionaries of the Sacred Heart,47
a recently founded Order, but already tested and solid. The Superior
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General, who has become ill, will come a little later to plan with
Your Excellency and with the pious Mrs. Cesnola48 what should be done. The sisters’
issue is extremely delicate and I wish that mature and well thought out
decisions be taken to assure the success of the noble project.
I
send cordial greetings to your dear and faithful Don Carlo.
May
God bless you, esteemed Archbishop, and preserve you for many long years for
the welfare of souls and for the honor of the episcopate. Kissing your sacred
ring, with deep veneration, I remain
Your Excellency’s very devoted and affectionate
servant and confrere,
Gio. Battista, Bishop of Piacenza
45 AGS EB 01–04 (Copy of the original
and draft).
46 The two new Missionaries were
Father Giacomo Annovazzi and Father Oreste Alussi. Fr. Anovazzi worked in the United States in New York
and Buffalo.
Fr. Alussi, born in Piacenza in 1856, became a
member of Bishop Scalabrini’s Congregation in 1888 and for many years he worked
zealously in New Haven, Boston
and other parts of the United
States. He died in Piacenza in 1928. The two priests were part
of the second team of missionaries sent to the United States on January 24, 1889,
which included also Fathers Giuseppe Martini and Luigi Paroli and the lay
Brothers Angelo Armani, Carlo Villa, Giacomo Borsella and Vincenzo Arcella.
47 The Missionary Sisters of the
Sacred Heart, founded by Saint Frances Xavier Cabrini in 1880 in Codogno, Diocese of
Lodi, under her leadership as their Superior General, were to dedicate
themselves to education, care of the sick and of the orphans, and of Italian
migrants. Bishop Scalabrini met Mother Cabrini for the first time in November 1887 in Rome
and convinced her to go to America
and assist the immigrants. She arrived there for the first time on March 31,
1889. Cf. Mary Louise Sullivan, MSC, Mother
Cabrini, Italian Immigrant of the Century. New York: Center for Migration Studies, 1991. Giuseppe dall’Ongaro, Francesca Cabrini. La Suora che conquistò
l’America. Milano:
Rusconi, 1982.
48 Mrs. Cesnola is the wealthy Mary
Jennings Reid, a convert to Catholicism, who married in 1861 the Piedemontese
Count Luigi Palma di Cesnola (1832–1904). The Count became an American citizen
and was appointed Brigadier General by President Lincoln for services rendered
to the Union Army during the American Civil War. Named Consul General in Cyprus, he collected many archeological pieces
and donated them to the Metropolitan Museum of Art of New York that he founded and whose Director
he became in 1879. Mary and Luigi Cesnola and their two daughters assisted
Saint Frances Xavier Cabrini and her Sisters especially in the founding of an
Italian orphanage in Mahattan, later relocated to West Park, New York.
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