Reviewed by Jordan Stanger-Ross | Reviews | Journal of American Ethnic History, 27.2

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Reviewed by Jordan Stanger-Ross | Reviews | Journal of American Ethnic History, 27.2 | The History Cooperative

Reviews

Priest, Parish, and People: Saving the Faith in Philadelphia's "Little Italy." By Richard N. Juliani. Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2007. x + 395 pp. Map, photos, notes, and index. $35.00 (paper.)

Richard N. Juliani made an inspired choice in placing Father Antonio Isoleri—who served as pastor from 1870 to 1926 of the nation's first dedicated Italian parish—at the center of an historical monograph. Established in South Philadelphia in 1852, the Italian Mission of St. Mary Magdalen dePazzi served a small population—numbering at most several hundred people—when Isoleri arrived. By the time of his retirement, South Philadelphia housed more than forty-three thousand Italian-born residents and thousands more of their descendants (pp. 4–5). Presiding over a seminal institution during the great wave of Italian immigration to the United States, Isoleri also ministered through a period of tremendous controversy and excitement within the Catholic Church and the birth of the Italian nation. Isoleri publicly grappled with the social, religious, and political controversies of his day, not only from the pulpit but also in a prodigious body of both prose and poetry. Thus, Juliani chose a protagonist well positioned to substantiate his argument that the history of Italian immigrants demands appreciation of the entanglement of religion with the rest of social experience. Unfortunately, the author stumbles in his attempts to connect Isoleri and his parish to larger historical themes; the book largely falls short of Juliani's ambition to have "transcended local history" (p. 165).

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