La prima santa d'America: vita di Madre Cabrini [The First Saint in America: life of Mother Cabrini]. Brooklyn: Casa Ed. Fortuna Publishing, 1944.

La prima santa d'America: vita di Madre Cabrini [The First Saint in America: life of Mother Cabrini]. Brooklyn: Casa Ed. Fortuna Publishing, 1944.

La prima santa d’America reflects the intense pride in Mother Cabrini that continued to exist nearly thirty years after her death. Although she was not canonized a saint until 1946, the title of this work predicts it with certainty, which is not surprising given the lengthy gestation period that usually precedes canonization.

Cabrini was known as “the Saint of the Emigrants” and “the Italian Saint,” and was the first U.S. citizen to be so honored with the title. See In memoria della Rev.ma Francesca Saverio Cabrini, part of the Collection. The Italian American pride was all the greater in that the first American saint was an Italian, rather than the Irish, whose less than hearty welcome to their later-arriving, non-English speaking fellow Catholic immigrants no doubt contributed to the anti-clericalism of the sovversivi (subversives) (see Podrecca and Galantara, L’Asino and Pulvio Zocchi’s Sprazzi di Luce, both part of the Collection, for Italian anti-clericalism).

Lalli and the writer of the preface to this work, Pietro Novasio, teamed up again two years later in La strada della gioia, q.v. They were also editors of and contributors to Divagando [Wandering], a somewhat lavish, illustrated New York Italian publication of the 1940s and 1950s.

Franco Lalli

Preface by Pietro Novasio.

Casa Ed. Fortuna Publishing

1944

18.5 x 13cm; 140 p.

Italian