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young Sicilian immigrants, Santi and Menu, find emancipation:
“during his year and a half, spent in the busy life of New York, that
boy [Menu] seemed to have become a mature man”.35 However,
they both come back to stay, since “the fatherland is always the bet-
ter place”36; “I want to be Sicilian, Italian, not a bastard American!”37
is the emphatic cry that crowns Menu’s, ultimately “conservative”,
decision never to leave Ràbbato again.
Among the different and predominantly negative political-ideo-
logical views of emigration within Italian society in the late nine-
teenth century, the Catholic establishment occupied a singular posi-
tion. Since the occupation and annexation of Rome by the kingdom
of Italy in 1870, the Popes considered themselves prisoners within
the Vatican. The Church therefore opposed any policy of the Italian
state, but it also maintained an anti-emigration stance in conjunc-
tion with the landholding class, traditionally close to the Church.
On the one hand, parish priests and nuns were proactive in anti-
emigration propaganda all over rural Italy. On the other, as the flow
of emigration became more and more uncontrollable, the Church
began to organise its activity in the countries of destination. That
said, for much of the great emigration period, Catholic organisa-
tions were the only institutions that dedicated themselves to effec-
tive and practical assistance to emigrants. Catholic congregations
were particularly active in providing information about and advice
on schools and in educational planning in the Americas. In 1875,
ten years before Argentina introduced public education, the Salesians
of Don Bosco (1815–1888) were already engaged in assisting
Italian emigrants in that country, while, in 1889, Sister Francesca
Saverio Cabrini (1850–1917) started her teaching activity in New
York City, where she subsequently organised an efficient school
system for Italian immigrants. In 1909 the Catholic confederation
Italica Gens was established in Turin, with the aim of coordinating
all the Catholic missions, orders and congregations operating on the
American continent. According to the Official Catholic Directory,
35 Capuana 2007: 72. “In un anno e mezzo di vita nel fervido affaccendamento di New York quel
ragazzo sembrava diventato uomo maturo”.
36 Ibid.: 72. “La patria è sempre la patria”.
37 Ibid.: 72. “Voglio essere siciliano, italiano, non americano bastardo!”
STEFANO ROSATTI