Page 5 - Italian American Herald - August 2019

FROM THE COVER
continued from page 1
Today Italy remains a predominantly Roman Catholic country, with minorities of Muslims, mostly from recent immigration, Sikhs and Jews. Christian Protestants are historically few since 97.67% of Italians are baptized according to the rite of the Catholic Church.
Here in the U.S., Protestantism seems to have taken a stronger hold on Italians and Italian-Americans dating to 1656 when a considerable number of Italian Waldensians escaping persecution landed in what is now New York City. Many of them settled in New Castle, Delaware and from there moved on to Philadelphia.
In 1889, on Catherine Street in South Philadelphia, Dr. Teofilo D. Malan established the Methodist Episcopal Italian Evangelical Church. This church published La Verità, an Italian language newspaper founded by Dr. Malan in 1890. The First Italian Presbyterian Church of Philadelphia was established in South Philadelphia in 1900 at 1020 S. Tenth St. Its first pastor was Reverend Amaldo
Stati. The Church’s first services took place
in a tent near the site that would eventually be where the church would be built at 10th and Kimball Streets. It didn’t take long to build a permanent structure, since the church
had rapidly converted enough members to raise the funds to do so. By 1903 the Church established its first Italian mission and flourished as an Italian based congregation. Since a significant number of my husband’s relatives were congregants of the church, I heard first-hand of the effort made by many members of the church to convert relatives and friends.
After the success of the First Italian Presbyterian Church, the Second Italian Presbyterian Church was established at
65th and Callowhill Streets in the West Philadelphia Italian enclave. It began as
the Christian Italian mission in November
of 1905. The mission quickly gathered momentum and in 1908 the trustees build a new and larger church on a parcel adjacent to St. Donato’s Italian National Roman Catholic Church.
In 1910 the Christian Italian Mission was renamed the Second Italian Presbyterian Church of Philadelphia. Today these two churches are still active, but are no longer are named “Italian Presbyterian” and serve the Korean and Vietnamese communities. Unlike their Catholic counterparts, Italian- American Protestants quickly assimilated and moved out of the old neighborhoods. Today, though an overwhelming majority of
Italians-Americans in the Delaware Valley are Roman Catholic, there remain among them Protestants of all denominations, mainly Presbyterians, Methodists, and Baptists.
As of the latest research, there are no longer any Protestant churches in
the region specifically identifying as “Italian.” However, the 2010 census estimated that 14% of Italian-Americans identify themselves as Protestants.
While there is no
question that the effort
to convert Italians in this
country to Protestantism
had its religious
significance, there was
another underlining reason
for this proselytizing effort.
The powers behind this
early effort to convert Italian
immigrants to Protestantism
were part of a mission
to wean Italian immigrants away from facilitate the Americanization and assimilation Catholicism. Many believed this would into the “melting pot.” IAH
ITALIAN-AMERICAN HERALD
AUGUST 2019 | ITALIANAMERICANHERALD.COM 5
The church on Christian Street appears in an illustration in an annual report of Philadelphia’s Protestant Episcopal Italian Mission PHOTO COURTESY OF ARCHIVES OF THE DIOCESE OF PENNSYLVANIA
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