Pope John Paul I - Urbi et Orbi

It was on this day in 1978 that Albino Cardinal Luciani was elected to the See of Peter, taking the name Pope John Paul I, the last Italian to date to occupy the papal throne.

Famous Italian-Texans

Large scale Italian immigration to the United States usually focused on the big cities of the eastern seaboard in New York, Massachusetts, Rhode Island and so on. However, Italian-Americans have left a mark on other areas as well, including the state of Texas. In 1880 it was an Italian-American businessman who came up with the idea of linking New York and Texas by railroad. This was Count Giuseppe Telfener who got together with his father-in-law D.E. Hungerford and John MacKay (a Nevada silver baron) to form the “New York, Texas & Mexico Railway Co.” Telfener was a veteran railroad man who had already built a 350-mile railroad in Argentina. This was, of course, a much more grand and ambitious enterprise and also an opportunity to establish Italian colonies in Texas. Some 1,200 Italian laborers were brought in to law the first section of tracks between Victoria and Rosenberg. Telfener hoped that these Italian workers would eventually send for their families and settle down along the railroad in Texas. The sight of this Italian army of railroad workers caused the locals to nickname the track “the Macaroni Line”.

However, there were problems with the new railroad. Just importing the workers and building the first section of track had cost the New York, Texas & Mexico Railway Company some two million dollars. Only 92 miles of track had been laid and half of the workforce had already quit because of sickness and poor conditions. What was a crisis became a total disaster in July of 1882 when Texas ordered a halt to all railroad construction in the state. The problem was a rather major bookkeeping error by which Texas had issued land grants for about 8 million more acres than were available. Oops! Math can sure be a pain. However, Count Telfener did not let that get him down. He still ran trains on the 92 miles of track he had already put down in Texas until 1884. The next year his track was bought by the Southern Pacific company so that the old “Macaroni Line” is still around today, running through towns which bear the name of the family of Count Giuseppe Telfener. There is Telferner (yeah, they spelled his name wrong), Inez (named after his daughter), Edna (named after his other daughter), Louise (his sister-in-law) and the towns of MacKay and Hungerford named after his business partners.

Another Italian to leave his mark on Texas was the artist and sculptor Pompeo Coppini, originally from Tuscany. He came to Texas for a visit in 1902 and decided to stay, opening up an art studio in San Antonio and making his home right there in the “Alamo City”. He was promptly hired to sculpt a monument, a larger-than-life statue of Dr. Rufus C. Burleson, the late President of the prestigious Baylor University. Coppini was happy to take the job but had a very hard time finding a suitable model to work off of. No one seemed to fit the part. Finally, however, he found his man -a drunken bum he discovered on the street. This was the model who Coppini used to sculpt the statue of a very strict and religious Baptist professor. However, everything worked out and Coppini did a masterful job with the widow of the late professor saying that the statue was the spitting image of her husband. One cannot help but wonder if she had any idea who the model was?

Culture came to north Texas thanks to Italian innovation. It started with Antonio Ghio who owned and operated a dry goods store in Jefferson, Texas from 1867 to 1873. When the locals refused to allow Jay Gould to build a railroad through Jefferson, Ghio decided business prospects would be better elsewhere and he moved to Texarkana. In that famous city, Antonio Ghio helped organize a Catholic Church and supported the establishment of a Catholic education system. With business flourishing he also brought the first railroad to Texarkana, built an artificial gas plant and an opera house to give the area some refinement and Italian culture. In 1884 he opened a second theatre and three years later the attraction of Spring Lake Park. Anthony Ghio was elected Mayor of Texarkana, serving three terms, was married and had eight children. One of his granddaughters, Corrine Griffith-Marshall was one of the first big American movie stars in the early days of the silent pictures.

There are many others who could be named. Italians have been in Texas since the earliest colonial days, especially those from Naples and Sicily as both were, at the time, under the Spanish Crown. Prospero Bernardi was an Italian-Texas who fought in the battle of San Jacinto where Texas won her independence. Francesco (Frank) Qualia came from northern Italy to Del Rio and established the oldest winery in Texas in 1883. Sam Lucchese, an Italian-Texan, became the maker of the finest and most famous cowboy boots in the state. Antonio Mateo Bruni, from Emilia-Romagna, became one of the most successful ranchers and businessmen in south Texas and Bruni Park in the border city of Laredo is named in his honor. Communities have come and gone or assimilated to the point that few recognize them but Italian festivals are still part of the annual calendar in Texas cities like Houston, Bryan, Dallas and Fort Worth. The Order of the Sons of Italy also has a branch in Texas, based in San Antonio, appropriately known as the Pompeo Coppini Lodge. There website can be visited here.

Odoacer, King of Italy

It was on or about this day in 476 AD that the German chieftain Odoacer was proclaimed rex Italiae by his troops after his revolt overthrew Emperor Romulus Augustulus, usually considered the last of the Western Roman Emperors. However, many people have a mistaken view of Odoacer and how he behaved after he and his mutinous forces deposed Emperor Romulus. Odoacer, although his rule was based on power, had the belated support of the Roman Senate and he claimed to be using his authority on behalf of the Emperor Julius Nepos, exiled Western Roman Emperor who had been replaced by Emperor Romulus through the betrayal of his father, Orestes, who had been in the employ of Julius Nepos (after having been a chief lieutenant of Attila the Hun). Although his rule was mostly unquestioned, Odoacer usually only claimed to be the agent of Julius Nepos or, after his time, the Eastern Roman Emperor who still claimed sovereignty over the whole of Italy. Eventually he did get involved in the Byzantine intrigues of the west and was at first successful in the war that followed, conquering Austria. However, the Eastern Emperor told Theodoric the Goth that he could be King of Italy with imperial blessings if he could defeat and kill Odoacer. After fighting his way onto Italian soil Theodoric invited Odoacer to a banquet where he was poisoned and killed in 493, clearing the way for the reign of King Theodoric the Great.

Every Girl Loves a Soldier

Emperor Theodosius the Great

Emperor Theodosius I, a native of Spain, was a great statesman and a devout Christian. His father was executed for treason in 375 but Theodosius' talent ensured that he was recalled after the unprecedented Roman defeat by the Visigoths at Adrianople, where Emperor Valens was killed on the field of battle. Theodosius was made a general and sent to defend the border by Emperor Gratian, the Roman Emperor who officially dropped the title "Pontifex Maximus" from the imperial list, surrendering it to the Pope. Theodosius proved himself to be a bold and brilliant commander, firmly defeating the Goths and reestablishing Roman control over the region. Because of his success, Gratian named Theodosius Emperor of the East on January 19, 379. Theodosius finished up the Goths, concluded peace with them and brought greater unity to Eastern Rome by defeating and executing the traitor Magnus Maximus who had usurped the throne of Emperor Gratian.

With this, Theodosius became the sole Emperor of Rome; it would be the last time in history that one man who rule over both the east and the west. He then began a long association with the great Bishop Ambrose of Milan and mutual respect soon grew between them. Their relationship would be the foundation of the Church and State ideal for Christendom. Coming from the east, where the Church tended to be slightly more subservient, and being a Roman Emperor after all, Theodosius and Ambrose soon came into a slight conflict. Once, while at mass, St Ambrose sent a deacon to request that Theodosius stop sitting among the clergy and move in with the congregation saying, in a very brilliant remark, "The Emperor is in the Church, not over it". When the bishop opposed a policy, the Emperor was insulted and for a time refused to deal with St Ambrose at all.

However, Emperor Theodosius was nothing if not a zealous son of the Church, in fact it was his methods rather than his principles which most often brought him into controversy with the Bishop of Milan. He was a Roman Emperor, lifted from the field of battle to assume the purple, and he knew one way of dealing with enemies: harsh severity. In 390 the action occured which caused the event for which Emperor Theodosius is most famous. The capital city of Macedonia, Thessalonica, one of the greatest cities in the Roman world, rose up in rebellion against the Emperor. Their was a riot, mobs stormed government buildings and the Roman commandant was stoned to death. The Emperor was enraged, St Ambrose tried to calm him and advise forgiveness, but this was not the way Roman soldiers were used to acting. Traitors had to be made example of. Emperor Theodosius issued his order for a reprisal, but after wrestling with his conscience, recalled the command. Alas, it was too late, and the order was carried out. All of the people of Thessalonica were invited to the stadium for games, a sign of reconciliation perhaps. Once inside however, the exits were sealed and imperial troops stormed in and for the next three hours massacred 7,000 Thessalonians, men, women and children.

In an act many modern bishops could learn from, St Ambrose sent Theodosius a confidential letter informing him that this act of cruelty had caused him to be excommunicated and that he should not present himself for communion. He reminded the emperor about the holy King David, who had also sinned but repented and was restored to God's favor. Until Theodosius did the same, he was cut off from the Most Blessed Sacrament. St Ambrose wrote to him, "I dare not offer the sacrifice, if you determine to attend. For can it possibly be right, after the slaughter of so many, to do what may not be done after the blood of only one innocent person has been shed?" The Emperor was torn by this; he felt great saddness and remorse, yet it went against centuries of Roman tradition for the Emperor to lower himself before any man or confess to an error of any kind. He passed a new law that punishment must wait 30 days after one is condemned, but still the bishop insisted that the Emperor do public penance before being reconciled fully with the Church. Finally, in an unprecedented and truly historical event, Theodosius, the exalted Caesar, Emperor of Rome, came to the basilica, solemnly removed all of his imperial regalia and symbols of rank, knelt before the simple bishop and confessed his sin before all present. He did penance from October until December showing full humility and repentance before he was totally reconciled with the Church and allowed to recieve Holy Communion. It was an important act that set the precedent for the final superiority of the Church in spiritual matters, even outranking the Emperor himself.

The event seems to have quite an impact on Theodosius. He said later that, "I know of no except Ambrose who deserves the name of bishop". In 391 Emperor Theodosius officially made Rome a Christian Empire, closing down all of the remaining pagan temples, outlawing pagan worship and making Catholicism the official state church. His official declaration stated that the religion of Rome would be that, "which Holy Peter delivered to the Romans...and as the Pontiff Damasus manifestly observes it." The following year there was another rebellion, this one backed by the promise of a pagan emperor, which Theodosius was able to put down. He also insisted on Catholic orthodoxy, being a strong opponant of the spread of Arianism. He passed laws against heresy and saught with all of his power to make Rome a strictly orthdox, Catholic state, united by one Church and one Emperor. However, he was never again harsh with his enemies. According to the historian Sozomen, "He did not desire to punish, but only to frighten his people, that they might ponder, as he did, Divine matters". As part of his effort to ensure true religious teaching throughout the empire, earlier in 381 he had called the Council of Constantinople, the fisrt since Constantine's Council of Nicaea. It's main purpose was to show the error of the Arian heresy.

Emperor Theodosius the Great died in 395. He left a legacy matched by few others in Roman history. The Empire had been reunited, internal subversion suppressed, external enemies repelled, paganism abolished, and religious unity through the Catholic Church. Rome was united, strong and religiously sound. At his funeral, St Ambrose delivered the oration, a brilliant tribute to a great Christian Emperor called "De obitu Theodosii".

Italian Albania

The Italian occupation of Albania is one of the more misunderstood aspects of a period in which a great deal is misunderstood. Italy and Albania had a long history together, going back to ancient times. The old Roman Republic had settled on the Albanian coast even before the north of the Italian peninsula was under Roman control. Italian rule returned in the fifteenth century as the Albanian coast came under the control of the Republic of Venice (as did most of the Adriatic coast) until the Venetians were pushed out, centuries later, by the Ottoman Turks. In 1908 the Albanians revolted against Ottoman rule but were suppressed. However, they were not pacified and it was the defeat of the Ottoman Empire by Italy in 1911-1912 that inspired the last Albanian uprising which forever removed Turkish power from the region and established, at least temporarily, Albanian independence. In 1913 Albania was recognized as an independent country though most countries recognized that Italy had a ‘special relationship’ with the emerging state. Not long after, Albania began to fall apart after the onset of World War I. It was the Kingdom of Italy that came to her rescue.

Italians in Albania, World War I

Austria-Hungary, Serbia and Greece all sent forces to try to claim large pieces of Albanian territory, in the case of Greece, not always with the approval of the central government. The Kingdom of Italy sent a large expeditionary force to Albania in 1915 that pushed the invading Greeks out of southern Albania. The last of the Greeks were expelled in 1916 and a “neutral zone” was established across the frontier to protect Albanian independence which Italy took as its special concern. Greece later joined the Allies and helped in defeating Bulgaria and the Italian army in southern Albania pushed northward, expelling the last occupying forces (Montenegrins) from northern Albania by the end of the war. In the past, the major powers of Europe had, more than once, told Italy to look to Albania as a colony but in the aftermath of the First World War the Kingdom of Italy became the guarantor of Albanian independence, effectively Albania was an Italian protectorate. It was self-governing but relied on Italy for protection and for most of the money which funded the rebuilding of Albania after so many years of war and being an almost forgotten Turkish backwater.

Zog I

In the aftermath of World War I and the coming to power of the self-proclaimed King Zog of Albania, Italy was by the far the largest investor in Albania and loaned vast amounts of money to Albania to keep the country afloat. The sanctions imposed on Italy by the League of Nations over the war with Abyssinia further highlighted the importance of Albania for Italy due to the oil wells there. Italy, particularly Mussolini, was determined to never be at the mercy of an international organization that could starve the country of the resources that were vital to it. So, it should not really have been surprising when, after all of the investment and all of the loans Italy had given to King Zog to develop Albania, only to have him say he would not be paying these back that Italian forces were sent in to occupy the country. It should also be said, in all honesty, that when this actually happened, the occupation of Albania was not something that the bellicose Mussolini had planned out ahead of time. In fact, it could hardly have happened at a worse time for Italy. The default on the loans came the very month that the Spanish Civil War had ended and the Italian economy had already been pushed to the limit by intervention there and the war in Abyssinia along with the international sanctions that went with it. On top of all of that came the announcement from Zog that Albania would not be paying Italy the money they owed and it was only then that action was taken.

King Vittorio Emanuele III

For his part, King Vittorio Emanuele III warned against the occupation because of the destabilizing effect it might have on Italian relations with the rest of Europe. He worried, quite correctly as it turned out, that as Mussolini angered Britain and France it pushed Italy closer to Germany and made the country too dependent on a disreputable regime. But, Italian interests had to be secured, particularly the oil wells at Devoli which Albania had already given Italy access to. There was also the unstable element of the self-proclaimed King Zog. He had fought his way to the top of political power in Albania and, as his biographer Jason Hunter Tomes wrote, “unable and frankly unwilling to have much faith in any group of his people, Zog strove to keep all classes in unstable equilibrium. Through hours of hideously convoluted talk, he obsessively manipulated his assorted underlings (nearly all older than himself) in an effort to exercise personal control from seclusion”. Today he is most remembered for the brevity of his reign and for his place in the Guinness Book of World Records for being the heaviest smoker in history, sucking down 225 cigarettes a day.

Many other powers had been worried about the erratic rule of Zog and most of the Albanian people were kept in discontent and disarray. More liberal minded people were aghast at his promotion of himself to royal status while traditional Albanians were outraged by his abolition of Islamic law and marriage to a Catholic Hungarian-American. His great love of poker did not endear him to the population of a country whose religion forbids gambling. His government was rife with feuds and intrigue, there had been numerous attempts on his life and he maintained power by setting the feudal tribes against each other which meant that he had many enemies but who had little time to strike at him. Nonetheless, he lived a paranoid and reclusive existence, afraid to go out in public. There were also those nationalists in the country who sought to unite with the Albanian populations in neighboring countries to create the “Greater Albania” they had so long dreamed of. All of this made the various foreign ministries of the European powers extremely nervous that the misrule of Zog would cause Albania to be the spark to ignite another powder keg in the Balkans. As a result of all of this, there was little genuine outrage when Italy began to move against Albania which had long been recognized as a de facto Italian protectorate anyway.

Italian troops occupying Albania

Another point to keep in mind was that this was an occupation rather than an invasion. There were only a handful of casualties and hardly any resistance at all as the Albanian police and soldiers scattered pretty quickly after the Italian troops landed. Almost as soon as it happened, King Zog had already fled and was in a fleet of limousines racing for the border loaded down with gold bars, fancy furniture, designer suites and evening gowns, lavish jewelry and, of course, several crates full of cigarettes. Most were glad to see him go and many Albanians came out to cheer in welcome their so-called “conquerors”. Although publicly many countries condemned this action, it is important to note that most of these same powers were privately relieved that Italy had brought a potentially dangerous situation under control. Even the British Foreign Secretary, Anthony Eden, sent Mussolini (a man he despised) a telegram immediately afterwards thanking him for dealing with the situation and promising British support in the future. The only people who were genuinely nervous were the French who feared that, with the Adriatic secured, Mussolini might turn his attentions to recovering Nice, Savoy and Corsica from them.

Nothing of the sort happened of course. The Kingdom of Albania came into personal union with the Kingdom of Italy in the person of King Vittorio Emanuele III. It was an extension of the reign of the House of Savoy, not a political takeover of Albania by Italians, which is an important point to keep in mind. Of course, Mussolini would not have stood for anyone holding power who was opposed to his regime but, unlike most other similar incidents around the world, foreign rule was not imposed on the Albanians. The two viceroys appointed in succession to represent the King in Albania were, of course, Italians but all of the prime ministers of Albania were native Albanians who had been serving in government long before the Italian occupation. The first had even been the prime minister under King Zog, the next was one who had fought on the Turkish side against Italy in the Italo-Turkish War of 1912, yet after Albania was united with Italy even this man was given a seat in the Senate in Rome. The final two prime ministers were also native Albanians and it was the Albanian government, acting on its own, which had voted to depose King Zog (after he fled the country) and themselves voted for union with Italy. Which is not to say, of course, that there were no problems. An Albanian radical attempted to assassinate the prime minister and King Vittorio Emanuele III during a visit to Tirana but was, fortunately, unsuccessful.

Albanian Fascist Party

The military was reformed with 7.000 of the original 10,000 men of the Albanian army forming special Albanian units within the Italian Royal Army. There were six Royal Albanian Army Battalions, two fortress machine gun battalions, a Royal Guard battalion, two legions of Carabinieri and one Albanian MVSN legion. These forces would later take part in the Greek war and the war in Yugoslavia. A customs union with Italy was established along with a tariff union, more subsidies were sent to develop the country and Italian companies began investing heavily in the region. Further development would certainly have followed had it not been for the outbreak of World War II. During the war Albania received reward as well as unfair ridicule. After the initial setbacks of the invasion of Greece, Mussolini primarily blamed the Albanian units for the early defeats and while it is true that the Albanian forces performed quite poorly (some firing on their own men) this was an unfair effort by Mussolini to shift the blame away from his own mismanagement and ill-advised attack. After that, morale -not surprisingly- fell and many Albanians deserted and many units were disbanded.

Italian occupation lasted only a little while longer, until 1943, when Italy withdrew from the Axis. King Vittorio Emanuele III formally abdicated as King of Albania on September 8, 1943 by which time Albania had already been occupied by Nazi Germany with, as before, some Albanians collaborating and others resisting. Yet, it was only during that brief period of union with Italy that the long-held dream of a “Greater Albania” was achieved when the map of the Balkans was re-drawn to include most of Montenegro, parts of Serbia, Greece and other areas in a greatly expanded Kingdom of Albania. Sadly, that was a triumph that was very short-lived. After World War II Albania came under communist control and the rule of the brutal dictator Enver Hoxha, so radical a Stalinist that eventually he alienated Soviet Russia, Red China and Yugoslavia because of his murderous and self-destructive rule. Albania had the lowest standard of living of any country in Europe, yet, hope remains for the future as things have slowly began to recover from the communist era.

Empress St Helena

One of the most honored monarchs of the early Christian era is certainly the Empress Saint Helen or Helena, mother of Constantine the Great, the first Roman Emperor to become a Christian. It is not known exactly when or where Helena was born; some placing her birthplace in modern Turkey while other legends claim she was the daughter of a British king born near modern-day Colchester. The year of her birth has been estimated as sometime between 240 and 250 AD. Nevertheless at some point she met and married the general and future Roman Emperor Constantius I. Whether she was a full wife or a concubine is unknown but sometime after giving birth to their son Constantine (probably in what is now Serbia), Constantius divorced Helena and for a time she lived alone with only her son to comfort her. She never remarried and Constantine grew up very attached and devoted to his mother.

In 306 AD Constantine became Emperor of the Roman Empire. He is famous for reuniting the two halves of the empire and for making Christianity legal. No doubt a leading influence on his life in this direction was his mother Helena who Constantine gave the title “Augusta” in 325. That same year, with official access to the authority that went with that title, she embarked on a pilgrimage to Jerusalem to recover what Christian relics she could. Along the way she had a church built in Egypt in honor of the burning bush on Mt Sinai. At Jerusalem she had the Temple of Venus torn down that had been built near the tomb of Christ.

During the excavations involved with this and the founding of a new church on the site she discovered the relics of the True Cross and the nails used in the crucifixion which she carried back to Rome. At the site of her discovery her son later had built the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. She venerated the relics she had found in the private chapel of her palace which was later converted into the Basilica of the Holy Cross in Jerusalem. Among the other relics she found were the Holy Tunic and pieces of the rope which suspended Christ on the cross. She founded a number of churches and monasteries and contributed relics to a number of sites around the Mediterranean world.

St Helen, Empress of Rome, died in 330 AD with her son Constantine beside her. Her sarcophagus can still be seen in the Vatican museum. During her life St Helen was a source of great strength and affection for her son, and her spirituality was doubtless a source of inspiration to him. She was also greatly beloved by the ordinary people for her kindness, her generosity to the poor, the prisoners she liberated and her habit of worshipping with the rest of the Christian community with no finery or special treatment. Both the Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox Churches recognize Empress Helen as a saint.