Dear Readers,
An April assortment of Italian Connections for you: 1. Judge Samuel A. Alito Jr. was born on April 1, 1950. He is now a Justice on the U.S. Supreme Court.
He was nominated by President G. W. Bush to the post in late 2005, confirmed by the United States Senate in January 2006 and sworn in shortly after, thereby becoming the Court’s 110th Justice, and the second Italian American, joining Justice Antonin Scalia. 2. St. Francis of Paola was born in Paola (Calabria), Italy circa 1416.
He cured the sick, prophesied the future and was a major influence on five kings and seven popes. He was educated by the Franciscans at San Marco and at the age of 15 went to live as a hermit in a cave. He eventually founded nearly 500 monasteries and was canonized just twelve years after his death at age ninety-one. The religious community he founded was officially recognized by Rome in 1474 as the Hermits of St. Francis, but they changed their name to the Minim Friars in 1492.
A Minim Friar, Fr. Boyl, was with Columbus when he sailed the ocean blue on his second voyage of discovery to America in 1493. That St. Francis of Paola is not better known to the English-speaking world is to a large degree the fault of those who immigrated to the U.S.A. and Canada from Calabria and did nothing to propagate the saint from Paola. In 1976 Mario Segreti, born near Paola, in Belmonte Calabro, sought to rectify this situation by co-authoring the first work in English on the life of San Francesco di Paola.
It was published by TAN Books, and has been reprinted. To order St. Francis of Paola by Simi-Segreti call (800) 437-5876 or write TAN Books, Box 424, Rockford, Illinois 61105 and include $12.00 postpaid per book. 3. Giovanni Casanova was born in April 1725 in Venice.
Although Casanova, a diplomat, scientist, musician, author and more, started out as a seminarian and spent his twilight years as a librarian, it is for his amorous adventures that he is remembered, via his surname which has become a synonym for romantic rogues with charm, smooth lines and smooth moves that captivate women’s heart (usually of high social status) and then move on, often with enraged husbands or fiancées in pursuit. 4. Charles J. Margiotti was born in April 1891.
One of America’s leading criminal lawyers, he was attorney general for the state of Pennsylvania, serving three different governors, until his death in 1956. 5. Umberto Nobile, pioneer in Arctic aviation, born at Lauro (near Salerno), with Amundsen of Norway and Ellsworth of U.S.A., was in 1926 first to fly over the North Pole in the dirigibile “Norge” from the north of Norway (Spitzbergen) to Alaska.
Nobile was the first to fly over the spot where explorer Robert E. Perry stood on this day in 1909. Perry was the first man to travel across ice and snow to reach the North Pole, the top of the world. Umberto Nobile, the first to fly over it. 6. Ethiopia’s Obelisk of Axum , after nearly 60 years of promises deferred, was shipped in three segments, on three different flights, back to Ethiopia in April 2005, aboard a Russian-made Antonov-124 cargo plane, one of the few aircrafts in the world able to carry such heavy cargo.
There were many behind the scenes reasons why the Obelisk of Axum was finally returned, but the fact that Italian leaders want U.S. museums to hand back dozens of artifacts that came from Italian soil is one of them. Axum, in Ethiopia is home to many obelisks, but Italy carting off the elaborate obelisk sparked a six decade dispute. The Obelisk of Axum is an elaborately inscribed stone monolith, 78 feet from base to tip, that spent most of the 20th century in the middle of a busy Roman piazza.
To Ethiopians it’s 180 tons of evidence that 20th Century Italy snapped up treasures in Ethiopia, then resisted their return with the same lawless zeal that Italian leaders accuse U.S. museums of displaying. An Italian law, passed under fascist dictator Benito Mussolini in 1939, bans export of objects excavated since that year. Four years earlier, Mussolini had invaded and conquered Ethiopia in the first of the Fascist and Nazi aggressions that were to precipitate World War II.
In 1937 the Italians stripped the city of Axum (or Aksum) of its monolith. Brought to Italy, it was put up in the Piazza di Porta Capena, not far from the Colosseum, where it stood as a reminder of Italian colonial ambition, just across the street from the Ministry for Italian Africa. In 1941, the British drove the Italians out of Ethiopia, and in 1945 Mussolini was assassinated. In 1947, as part of a peace treaty, Italy’s postwar government agreed to return the monument and “all works of art, religious objects, archives and objects of historical value belonging to Ethiopia.”
In 1956 the Italians promised again. And again in 1997. Yet in Rome, the obelisk remained until April 2005, when it was finally airborne, after workers took down a 40-ton segment from the top of the monument, then a 71-ton segment, then the final 77-ton segment and it was “arrivederci Roma” for the obelisk. 7. St. John Baptist de la Salle (1651-1719) founder of the Christian Brothers. Over three hundred years ago, this priest had a lot of “new ideas” about teaching children.
Instead of teaching one child at a time, he thought it would be a good idea to put several students together in a classroom and his methods of education revolutionized the education system of the time. The Christian Brothers have become one of the largest teaching orders in the Church, based on his methods, which first became popular in Italy and France. 8. Palmiro Togliatti was born in Genoa, Italy on Palm Sunday 1893, accounting for his Christian name, but he began in 1944 to lead the Italian Communist party for nearly two decades from la Camera dei Deputati, Palazzo di Montecitorio in Rome. 9. Alessandro Malaspina, who led the expedition of scientific exploration and geographic drawings of Southern California, Vancouver Island and Alaska, died April 9, 1810 at age fifty-six. 10.
Arbor Day celebrations are marked by tree planting, to foster general interest in reforestation. Many states set “arbor day” dates according to their several climates, but many states with mild climates celebrate Arbor Day in April. Begun in 1872, Arbor Day takes its name from “arbor”, the botanical name for tree. When I was a child, if you saw a fig tree growing in a yard, it was a tip-off that the property owner was probably Italian. 11. Pope John Paul II, former bishop of Cracow, Poland, became pope 900 plus years after the death of another bishop of Cracow, April 11, 1079.
His name was St. Stanislaus and today is his fest day. In April 2005 a new Pontiff was elected in Rome and cardinal Joseph Ratzinger became Pope Benedict XVI. A beautifully illustrated children’s book, Joseph and Chico (Chico is a cat), describes the life of his “best friend” Pope Benedict and is an authorized biography of Pope Benedict XVI, for young people, approved by the Vatican. It is available from Ignatius Press, (800) 651-1531 for $17.95, plus postage. Order a copy of Joseph and Chico for the “bambini” in your life. They will love it and so will you. 12.
Piedmontese victory against the Austrians in April 1848 at Goito after a short war declared by Charles Albert (king of Sardegna) on Austria, two weeks earlier attacking Austrian forces in Lombardy. He arrived in Cremona (Lombardy) with 70,000 men and defeated the Austrians, but too many of the Italian patriots were republicans and he feared revolution more than he detested Austria. In 1849 Charles Albert abdicated in favor of Duke of Savoy, Vittorio Emanuele II. 13. Sicily declares itself independent of Naples April 13, 1848, but in May 1849, Neapolitan troops enter Palermo completing their re-conquest of Sicily. 14. Titanic sinks April 14, 1912.
Guglielmo Marconi’s invention ship-to-shore radio helped save lives after the supposedly “unsinkable” luxury liner sank upon hitting an iceberg. Of the 2,340 passengers and crew, more than 1,500 perished. Many were women and children immigrants on cheap “steerage” passages. Especially heroic was the ship’s band, which played hymns as the ship sank under it. 15. Federal Income Tax, traditionally due today. The IRS supports operating of the federal Government by collecting taxes each year. The IRS is the largest agency in the Department of the Treasury.
Our Treasury is awash in red ink these days. Our dollar is worth 65 cents versus the Euro. In April 1979, one U.S. dollar was worth 842 Italian Lire and for Americans visiting Italy it was a double “dolce vita”.
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