Exporting Italy across the Atlantic: The “Romanization” of the North American diocese and assistance to Italian emigrants
Author(s)
Date Issued
2023
Type
bookPart
Start Page
197
End Page
211
Abstract
While for the best part of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries Catholic North America was theoretically dependent on the diocese of Quebec alone, closely controlled by France, the situation changed with the Treaty of Versailles (1763). Now the Holy See had to deal first with British rule and then, after the American Revolution, with all the British colonies north of the 49th parallel as well as the newly born United States. Rome, therefore, faced the problem of erecting new dioceses for the British loyalists who had moved to the territories that in 1867 would form the Dominion of Canada and for those Catholics who remained in or emigrated to the United States. Starting with the creation of the diocese of Baltimore (1789), the current diocesan network in Canada and the United States was built. Rome was now determined to maintain control over the new dioceses rather than transfer them to the local states. Bishops were urged to visit Rome at least once if not more often and send their seminarians there for training. The process of Romanisation of the American and Canadian dioceses was not entirely successful. However, during the nineteenth century, the diocesan clergy gained a greater knowledge of Italy, as a result of having studied in Rome and then visited various regions of the country. This became an important element in dealing with the beginnings of Italian emigration to North America, especially since there were still no priests of Italian origin to help the new immigrants. Local priests, endowed with some rudimentary knowledge of Italian, assisted these immigrants and at once tried to explain to Canadians and Americans what Italy was - or at least what they believed it was. Their Roman experience, before and even after the capture of Rome, convinced them that there was a good, Catholic and responsible Italy facing a bad, anti-papal and anti-clerical one. This essay aims to show how, through the efforts of the Holy See to ‘Romanise’ the North American clergy during the nineteenth century, a complex process of intercultural exchange occurred on a transatlantic scale, shaping the formation of composite identities of the Italian immigrant communities.