5

Bishop Scalabrini and Archbishop Ireland

(1888–1904)

A common concern about immigration to the United States and a parallel involvement in the Holy See’s plan to promote pastoral care for the immigrants brought together Bishop Scalabrini and the brilliant and impetuous Archbishop of St. Paul, Minnesota, John Ireland. At the beginning of the Church’s action on behalf of Italian immigrants, Archbishop Ireland played an important role both because of the prestige he enjoyed, and because of his incisive proposals born of direct experience with immigrants of Irish and other nationalities. Evidence is his memorandum, “Project of an Initiative in Favor of Italian Immigrants especially in the United States,” and the immediate support given to Bishop Scalabrini’s Institute.¹

            In the few letters exchanged between the two Bishops² one finds a convergence of views and a common search for practical solutions. For Archbishop Ireland, leader of the progressive wing of the Church of his time in the United States, Italian immigration was a burning issue because it impacted directly the

debate on the public place of Catholics in American society. He writes that once Italian immigrants are judged, the Catholic Church is judged. Then, through Archbishop Ireland the Holy See confirms the opportunity of specific pastoral structures for immigrants.³ Bishop Scalabrini, in turn, reminds him that his new Congregation is “destined to give glory to God and to save souls.”

            From the correspondence we can only surmise the personal relationship developed between Archbishop Ireland and Bishop Scalabrini. But a revealing testimony survives in a letter of Archbishop Ireland to the Milanese countess Sabina di Parravicino Revel: “ Yesterday I spoke a lot of you, of your family, of Milan and of Italy with Bishop Scalabrini. The Bishop is in great health and, up to now, fascinated by America. He will visit me in St. Paul, where “all things Italian” will be discussed with calm.”⁴ After this first meeting in New York in August 1901, the two Bishops will meet again as they had agreed: “Yes, Bishop Scalabrini has paid me a visit in St. Paul,” Archbishop Ireland writes on November 27, 1901, “and besides I have met him twice in New York. If he has obeyed me, he will have visited Milan and spoken to you of America, of St. Paul and me. Yes, he is fascinating. His words exude the true Italian spirit, so gentle, so caressing, and at the same time they very much inspire. Together we have discussed every topic, we have been in conversation from morning till night. And if it were possible for me to love more ardently the Italian land and the Italian people, he would have led me to do it. Bishop Scalabrini during his stay in America has done great good for Italian immigrants. He is truly an apostle. Naturally, when I will visit Italy next time, I will have to go from Milan to Piacenza.”⁵ Bishop Scalabrini’s capacity for human relationship went beyond formalities. Another friend of Archbishop Ireland, a well known Catholic scientist, Fr. John A. Zahm of the University of Notre Dame, would have liked to have met Bishop Scalabrini at the University for a week and instead only got to meet him for a short time in New York, remained fascinated and defined him “an ideal ecclesiastic.”⁶

            On his part, Bishop Scalabrini was aware of the weight Archbishop Ireland’s support had. In 1889, speaking to the second group of missionaries leaving

for the United States, he underscored the fact that they were associated to the number of the apostles by enlisting in his most humble Congregation, greeted a few days earlier by the great Archbishop of St. Paul, Minnesota, “as the most beautiful, most useful, most fruitful form of Catholic apostolate of our days.”⁷ In a Latin language speech to the seminarians of the St. Paul diocese, Bishop Scalabrini shares Archbishop’s Ireland’s vision of an America over which Providence has great plans, and reminds them that their very wise and famous Archbishop is not only a glory of America, but also of Italy and of the entire world.⁸ Archbishop Ireland had arranged a meeting between Bishop Scalabrini and President Theodore Roosevelt. Writing to his Secretary Canon Camillo Mangot Bishop Scalabrini notes: “This morning at 10 o’clock I visited the White House, the President of the Republic, who received me with loving attention as soon as I arrived. He entertained me at length with exquisite kindness. Archbishop Ireland had prepared the ground very well.”⁹ The political skills of Archbishop Ireland are accompanied by an exceptional intellectual openness influenced by his education in France. His leadership is clear to Bishop Scalabrini even when he compares him to Cardinal James Gibbons of Baltimore. Again the scale tilts in favor of Archbishop Ireland: “From Washington I went on to Baltimore, where Friday (Oct. 11) was spent very happily in confident familiarity with the Cardinal Archbishop Gibbons, a man without formalities, very simple and very learned, a type like [the Cardinal Archbishop of Capua in Italy] Capecelatro. He is a degree superior to Archbishop Ireland in dignity, but he seems to me a degree inferior to him in ability. We left each other as old friends....”¹⁰ The affinity between Bishop Scalabrini and Archbishop Ireland starts from emigration concerns but it extends to the impact of the Church’s presence in the modern world, and to an attitude of trust in encounters with all people, and of a positive view of the future because Providence guides history.