3

On the Necessity of Protecting

the Nationality of the Immigrants (1891)¹

In March 1891 Bishop Scalabrini had a conversation with Pope Leo XIII on the question of emigration “and above all on the necessity to protect the various nationalities in those countries (of immigration). The Pope at the end was convinced and charged me to write a report on this topic, something I have very gladly already started.”² From this letter sent by Bishop Scalabrini to his close friend Bishop Geremia Bonomelli of Cremona, it has been concluded that the notes published here were intended and drafted as part of that report or pamphlet requested by Pope Leo. The incomplete and unedited notes are in the handwriting of Marquis Giovanni Battista Volpe-Landi, a close collaborator of the Bishop of Piacenza, but the ideas come from Bishop Scalabrini. It is not known if the pamphlet was ever concluded. The ideas expressed in these notes, however, will be better elaborated and formulated from a pastoral perspective in the Report submitted to Pius X in 1905 requesting the establishment of an office in the central administration of the Catholic Church for the pastoral care of migrants.³

The role of religion in the historical development of national character, of ethnic and national identities, finds a counterpart in the role of ethnicity and culture in general in the religious expressions of a people. At the conclusion of his pastoral visit to the United States Italian immigrant communities, Bishop Scalabrini noted: “Everywhere I have found a true explosion of religious and

patriotic enthusiasm and I became ever more convinced that our immigrants must preserve their nationality to preserve their Catholic religion that otherwise would be lost, and viceversa. Religion and Fatherland are inseparable. It is necessary that our migrants find everywhere our church and our school.”⁴

The concept of nationality in Bishop Scalabrini’s writings seems closer in its definition to the concept of ethnic identity.

The immediate pastoral concern of Bishop Scalabrini was the preservation of the faith of the immigrants, a category of people in his time with little literacy and other forms of education and very much socialized by their local peasant and traditional environment. While this sketchy and repetitious note of Bishop Scalabrini rightly stresses the link between culture and religion and in a way anticipates the current discussions on inculturation of the faith, it fails to take into account the possibility of the immigrants’ faith adapting to a new ethnic identity without having to give up the substance of its content. Perhaps Bishop Scalabrini wanted to stress to the anti-clerical Italian Government of the time that the action of the Church among the immigrants was also in the national interest. It remains, however, an incomplete analysis. Bishop Scalabrini will continue to emphasize the connection between national identity and faith, but he will also realize that integration was unavoidable and good, without ever arriving to see that the national identity would be that of the adopted country and no longer that of the country of origin.