[xkaydet65]

It took quite a while before Italians were fully accepted, even by the Church in America. I an 50 50 Italian Irish. When my parents celebrated their marriage at the Hotel Shelton in Manhattan they were the only 2 people to cross the dance floor. My mom went to Epiphany Church and school in Gramercy Park. She was treated wonderfully as she was Gramercy Park Tammany aristocracy. Italians in the parish were not permitted in the main church for Mass but had to go to the basement Church. They reacted by literally building their own Church, St Sebastian, and calling to the old country for priests. So in a very real sense Mother Cabrini was the NGO Italians needed in America to guide them past the bigoty of the Church in America.

[Antoninus]

They reacted by literally building their own Church, St Sebastian, and calling to the old country for priests. So in a very real sense Mother Cabrini was the NGO Italians needed in America to guide them past the bigoty of the Church in America.

This was not merely an Italian vs. Irish thing. Every ethnic group (Polish, Czech, German, etc.) had its own parish churches because there was real antipathy among all groups. Navigating that was a tricky prospect for any bishop. To a certain extent, it wasn't the native-born Americans who caused those problems, but the immigrant groups themselves. The native born Protestants tended to shun and dislike the Papists as a whole.

As a 100% Italian myself, I grew up long past the time when ethnic parishes were the norm. But even to this day, you will find echoes of that tendency. There are still "Italian" parishes in Philadelphia, though nobody speaks Italian anymore and few people in those parishes are anything but Americans. Most of those neighborhoods are now black, or hispanic, or yuppified.