A Migrant Missionary Story: The Autobiography of Giacomo Gambera ed. by Mary Elizabeth Brown (review)

The first parish was opened on Doty Island in the Fox River Valley city of Menasha. Although Morini's text does not mention it, one can surmise that the pastoral needs of the largely German and Irish Menasha community were only imperfectly met by the Italian Servîtes—even through a Tyrolese confrere was brought in to assist. Although there was no evidence that theywere rejected for being Italians, it is clear that the friars wanted to be working with Italians, whose numbers were beginning to grow throughout the MiddleWest. In 1874, at the urging of the Prior General, Morini began his mission among the growing Italian population scattered throughout Chicago. The administrator of the diocese, Bishop Thomas Foley, welcomed Morini, grateful to have some help in dealing with the erratically observant Italians. Foley's attitude toward his Italian co-religionists was revealed in a comment passed to Morini after the Servite had preached a successful mission to them: "Now that they are all in the grace of God, drown them all in the river before they lose it" (p. 77). With Foley's encouragement, land was purchased for what would later become the Basilica of Our Lady of Sorrows, a church famous in Chicago Catholic life for the huge crowds it drew in the thirties and forties to its fabled Novena to the Sorrowful