This statue of Mother Cabrini in a run-down park in Newark, New Jersey would be overlooked had it not become the center of a heated local controversy that teaches us something about the importance of monuments in a community.
Mother Cabrini was canonized a saint in 1949 — the first American! — by Pope Pius XII in recognition of her holiness and service to mankind. She was named Patroness of Immigrants in 1950.
In 1899, ten years after she arrived in America, Monsignor Ernesto D’Aquila asked her and her Missionary Sisters of the Sacred Heart of Jesus to open a school in Newark. It was first in the basement of the old Our Lady of Mount Carmel Church and later moved to two adjoining store fronts in the Ironbound neighborhood in the East Ward.
Italians started immigrating to New Jersey in the 1870s. By 1890 there were about 1,500 Italians in Newark. By 1908 the number had risen to 30,000. Newark was a hub of Italian-American life. Joe DiMaggio would take the New York Yankees to Newark to show them “real Italian food.” Frank Sinatra had bread from Giordano’s Bakery shipped to him every week until his death.
The first blow to the neighborhood came in the mid 1950s when thousands of families were displaced to make way for the construction of Interstate 280 and Columbus Homes, a high-rise public housing project. The next blow was the 1967, Newark the riots: during four days in July there were at least 26 deaths, hundreds of injuries, and widespread property damage, The National Guard occupied the city with tanks. If you want to get a feel for what the neighborhood was like in 1967, watch episode 7, season 1 of “The Sopranos,” “Down Neck” (another name for this neighborhood) in which Tony Soprano has a flashback to his childhood there. At the turn of this century, more homes were lost when Penn Station, which forms the East boundary of the neighborhood, was expanded.
This statue of Mother Cabrini was erected 1958 at the site of the school she founded. It sits in a small Mother Cabrini Park.
Earlier this year rumors that the statue was to be moved started circulating. Italians who had connections in the old neighborhood mobilized and contacted the city councilman for that area, requesting a meeting.
They were outraged. In 2017 the city replaced Columbus Day with Indigenous Peoples Day. In June 2020 a statue of Christopher Columbus, made in Rome by Giuseppe Ciochetti and presented to the city by Newark’s Italians in 1927, was removed by the city without warning to prevent its possible defacement or toppling in a Black Lives Matter protest. In 2023 the downtown site where the statue had stood was reimagined as Harriet Tubman Park. The Italians, under cover of darkness, removed another Columbus statue and have hidden it.
Seventy-five people showed up for a two-hour meeting. The Italians reflected that they felt their presence in this neighborhood, which was now known as a Portuguese area, was being erased. All that remains, they said, is St. Lucy’s, the “new” Our Lady of Mount Carmel, built in 1955, Spilingese Social Club and this statue of Mother Cabrini. “They talk about moving a statue of a saint and historical figure like they are trying to decide where to place a new couch in the living room,” one of them wrote. The parishioners of the church donated the statue, they said (actually, the inscription on the base says is was a gift of “Catholic War Veterans Post 156,” but it is likely they were members of Lady of Mount Carmel) and at least should have a voice in what happens to it.
The councilman explained that the idea to move the statue came from the Columbian Foundation, an Italian-American charitable group based in a North Ward Italian neighborhood. They proposed moving the statue to a park near St. Francis Xavier Park, about 3 miles north of its current location. (St. Francis Xavier was a 16th Century Spanish missionary; St. Francis Xavior (Mother) Cabrini took her name from his.) Their intent was to transform the park into a civic space to honor immigrants.
Mother Cabrini Park was poorly maintained, the councilman said, “an embarrassment to the city,” known as a hangout for the homeless and drug dealers. This would be a more respectful place for her, and safer for worshipers. There were also hints that the proposed move was a way of appeasing the North Ward community for the removal of the Columbus statue.
A tentative compromise seems to have been reached. A counterproposal was made to move the statue to the new Our Lady of Mount Carmel Church, about a mile and a half south of the current location but still in the Ironbound. Representatives of the church agreed. The councilman suggested that the residents step up and help maintain the current location until everything is resolved: maybe twice a month trash pickup to keep an eye on Mother Cabrini. Everyone seems satisfied, for now.
My two cents? I think Mother Cabrini is perfectly content in her rundown little park amid the homeless people and drug dealers who she ministered to all her life. The best way to show her respect is not to cart her off to a better neighborhood but rather to follow her example and love the people she has chosen to be her neighbors.
