Italian Americans & Soccer

 

The 2026 World Cup and America’s Long, Complicated Relationship with Soccer

As the 2026 FIFA World Cup unfolds across the United States, Canada, and Mexico, Americans are experiencing international soccer on a scale this country has never seen before.

The 2026 tournament is the first World Cup jointly hosted by three nations and the first expanded to 48 teams. It includes 104 matches played across 16 host cities, with most of those cities located in the United States.

For much of the world, soccer—or football—is more than a sport. It is part of national identity, family history, neighborhood loyalty, and local culture.

In the United States, however, soccer has followed a more complicated path.

That is especially true for Italian Americans. Although Italy possesses one of the greatest soccer traditions in the world, many Italian-American families did not pass down a strong attachment to the sport. Instead, they adopted baseball, American football, basketball, and other distinctly American games.

Why were Americans so slow to embrace the world’s most popular sport? Why did many Italian Americans, in particular, become disconnected from a game that means so much in Italy?

And could the 2026 World Cup finally change that?

America Already Had Its Own Games

One of the simplest explanations is that soccer arrived in a country that was already developing its own sporting culture.

During the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, baseball became known as America’s national pastime. College football grew into a major public spectacle. Basketball, invented in Massachusetts in 1891, spread rapidly through schools and community organizations.

Soccer was present too, but it never achieved the same unified national position.

U.S. Soccer’s historical timeline notes that many American colleges abandoned association football in favor of rugby-style football during the nineteenth century. Soccer nevertheless survived and grew in immigrant communities in places such as Fall River, Massachusetts; Kearny, New Jersey; and St. Louis.

This created an important difference between the United States and much of Europe.

In Italy, England, Spain, Germany, and many other countries, soccer developed into a common national language. In the United States, it became one sport among several—and often one associated with particular immigrant neighborhoods.

Soccer Became an Immigrant Sport

Soccer did not fail to exist in America. It was simply pushed away from the center of American popular culture.

Immigrant communities kept the game alive.

English, Scottish, Irish, German, Polish, Portuguese, Italian, Eastern European, Caribbean, Latin American, and other communities formed clubs, leagues, and local rivalries. Immigrants occupied many of the leading positions in early American professional soccer leagues, including the original American Soccer League of the 1920s and later regional leagues in cities such as Chicago and Los Angeles.

That ethnic foundation helped soccer survive, but it also limited its broader appeal.

Instead of being presented as an American sport belonging to everyone, soccer was frequently treated as something foreigners played.

Baseball and American football represented assimilation.

Soccer represented the old neighborhood.

For immigrant families eager to prove their loyalty to the United States, that distinction mattered.

Why Italian Americans Drifted Away from Soccer

At first glance, Italian Americans would seem like natural soccer fans.

Italy is a four-time World Cup champion. Italian clubs such as Juventus, Inter Milan, AC Milan, Napoli, Roma, Lazio, and Fiorentina have passionate supporters and long histories. In Italy, club loyalty can be tied to a city, a region, a family, and even a particular neighborhood.

But the Italians who immigrated to the United States did not all arrive with the modern soccer culture we now associate with Italy.

Many of the people who came during the great era of Italian immigration originated in poor rural communities, particularly in Southern Italy and Sicily. Historical research has noted that soccer in that period was still more closely associated in some places with urban populations and younger elites than with the rural migrants leaving for the Americas.

In other words, some Italian immigrants did not leave Italy as devoted followers of famous professional clubs. Modern Italian soccer culture was still developing at the same time many of them were building new lives overseas.

Their children and grandchildren then became increasingly American.

They learned English.

They attended American schools.

They served in the American military.

They entered American professions.

They followed the Yankees, Dodgers, Giants, Red Sox, Cubs, Bears, Packers, Lakers, Celtics, 49ers, and other American teams.

For many Italian-American families, embracing baseball or football was not a rejection of Italy. It was a declaration that they belonged in America.

A second-generation Italian-American child in New York, Chicago, San Francisco, Los Angeles, or San Diego was therefore often more likely to inherit a baseball team than an Italian soccer club.

That is one reason the intense club loyalty found in Italy was not always passed down among Italian Americans.

Baseball Was Especially Important

Baseball held a special place in Italian-American life.

Italian Americans could point proudly to players such as Joe DiMaggio, Yogi Berra, Phil Rizzuto, Rocky Colavito, and later Mike Piazza.

These players did more than win games. They represented acceptance.

At a time when Italians still faced discrimination and ethnic stereotypes, Italian-American baseball stars demonstrated that the children of immigrants could become national heroes.

Baseball offered Italian Americans an unmistakably American public identity.

Soccer, by comparison, remained connected to Europe and to ethnic enclaves. It did not offer the same route into the American mainstream.

The success of Italian Americans in baseball therefore helped pull attention away from the sport that was becoming Italy’s national passion.

Television Reinforced the Divide

Television also played a major role.

American football, baseball, and basketball became deeply integrated into commercial broadcasting. Their pauses, innings, timeouts, and breaks created natural spaces for advertising.

Soccer’s continuous halves were less convenient for the traditional American television business model.

More importantly, American viewers had limited access to international leagues. For most of the twentieth century, an Italian-American family could not easily watch every Juventus, Napoli, Inter, or Milan match from California or New York.

There was no streaming service carrying every Serie A game.

There were no social-media accounts providing constant highlights.

There were no smartphone alerts, international sports packages, or club websites translated into English.

Without regular access, inherited loyalty became difficult to maintain.

A grandfather might remember a club from his hometown, but his American-born grandchildren could watch the Dodgers, Yankees, or 49ers every week.

The 1994 World Cup Changed the Conversation

The first major turning point came when the United States hosted the 1994 FIFA World Cup.

The tournament demonstrated that Americans would fill stadiums for soccer. It also helped create the conditions for Major League Soccer, which began play in 1996.

Youth soccer expanded.

More American children played the game.

Cable television brought European competitions into American homes.

The English Premier League, Serie A, La Liga, the Bundesliga, and the UEFA Champions League gradually became easier to follow.

The internet then transformed everything.

Today an Italian American in California can follow Napoli, Roma, Juventus, Milan, or Inter as easily as a local American team. Fans can watch matches, read Italian sports newspapers, follow players online, join supporter groups, research their ancestral towns, and speak directly with relatives in Italy.

The distance between Italy and Italian America has never been smaller.

Why the 2026 World Cup Is Different

The 2026 World Cup represents something much larger than a repeat of 1994.

It is not merely a tournament visiting the United States for a few weeks. It is a continental event stretching across Canada, Mexico, and the United States, bringing the sport into some of North America’s largest metropolitan areas.

The expanded field of 48 countries has also made the tournament broader and more diverse than any previous World Cup.

For Americans, this means soccer is no longer being encountered only through distant European broadcasts or occasional international matches. The World Cup is happening in American cities, American stadiums, public viewing parties, restaurants, neighborhood bars, cultural organizations, and family gatherings.

Polling conducted during the tournament found that four in ten Americans planned to watch at least some of the World Cup. Among self-identified American soccer fans, more than eight in ten expected to watch some portion of it.

Another survey found that about six in ten Americans believed the tournament would increase the country’s overall interest in soccer, although a smaller percentage said it had personally increased their own interest.

That distinction is important.

The United States may not instantly become a traditional soccer nation because it hosted one successful World Cup. But the tournament can introduce millions of people to the culture surrounding the game.

Some will remain casual viewers.

Others will begin following the U.S. national team, Major League Soccer, the UEFA Champions League, or a European club connected to their family heritage.

That is how sporting traditions begin.

A Bittersweet World Cup for Italian Americans

For Italian Americans, the 2026 tournament carries a painful irony.

Italy failed to qualify for the World Cup for the third consecutive time after losing to Bosnia and Herzegovina in the European playoff process. For a four-time champion, missing three consecutive World Cups would once have seemed almost unimaginable.

There will be no Azzurri run for Italian Americans to celebrate in 2026.

No sea of blue jerseys following Italy through American stadiums.

No possibility of watching Italy lift the trophy on North American soil.

Yet Italy’s absence does not make the tournament irrelevant to Italian Americans.

In some ways, it makes the larger cultural question even more interesting.

Italian identity is not limited to supporting the national team once every four years. Italy’s soccer tradition also lives through Serie A, local clubs, regional rivalries, neighborhood loyalties, immigrant histories, and the many players connected to Italian football.

Even without the Azzurri, Italy remains deeply present in the global game. An analysis during the tournament found that Europe’s five largest domestic leagues—including Italy’s Serie A—supplied a substantial share of the players competing in 2026.

Italian Americans can therefore use this World Cup not only to mourn Italy’s absence but to learn more about the sport Italy helped shape.

Younger Italian Americans Are Rediscovering Their Heritage

Many younger Italian Americans are now reclaiming traditions that earlier generations allowed to fade during the process of assimilation.

They are researching genealogy.

Applying for recognition of Italian citizenship.

Learning the Italian language.

Visiting ancestral villages.

Cooking regional dishes rather than relying only on generalized Italian-American cuisine.

Attending patron-saint festivals.

Joining Italian cultural organizations.

Following Italian news and entertainment.

Soccer fits naturally into that rediscovery.

Supporting an Italian club can become another way of connecting with a family’s origins.

Someone with roots in Naples may begin following Napoli.

A family from Sicily may explore Palermo.

Someone with ancestry in Rome, Turin, Milan, Florence, Genoa, Bologna, or another city may discover the clubs and rivalries associated with that place.

Even those without a direct regional club connection can follow Serie A or support the Azzurri when Italy returns to international competition.

The internet makes these connections possible in a way previous generations could not have imagined.

Soccer Is Becoming American in Its Own Way

The growth of soccer does not mean it must replace baseball, football, or basketball.

That is often how the question is framed: Will soccer ever overtake the NFL? Will the World Cup transform America into Europe? Will children stop playing baseball and begin playing soccer instead?

Those are the wrong questions.

American culture rarely replaces one tradition completely with another. It absorbs, transforms, and adds.

Pizza did not replace hamburgers.

Italian festivals did not replace the Fourth of July.

Soccer does not have to replace American football to become an important American sport.

The United States is large enough to support all of them.

In fact, the uniquely American soccer fan may follow several different worlds at once: the U.S. national team, a local Major League Soccer club, a European team, and perhaps another national team connected to family ancestry.

An Italian American can support the United States and still feel emotionally connected to Italy.

There is no contradiction in that.

Two Countries, Two Sporting Traditions

Italian-American identity has always involved a balance between inheritance and assimilation.

Our ancestors came to the United States because they wanted new opportunities. Their children became Americans, often adopting American customs with extraordinary enthusiasm.

That included sports.

We should not criticize previous generations for choosing baseball or football over soccer. Their embrace of American sports reflected their determination to belong to their new country.

But assimilation does not require forgetting.

Today, Italian Americans can appreciate what earlier generations gained while also recovering some of what was lost.

We can attend a baseball game and watch Serie A.

We can cheer for an American football team and still follow the Azzurri.

We can be completely American while remaining proud of our Italian heritage.

Coming Home to the Beautiful Game

The 2026 FIFA World Cup may not suddenly make soccer America’s undisputed national sport.

It does not need to.

Its real legacy may be more personal.

A child may watch a match with a parent and become a lifelong fan.

An Italian-American family may begin asking which club their ancestral town supports.

Someone who never cared about soccer may discover Serie A.

A local Italian cultural organization may organize a viewing party.

A family may begin following both the United States and Italy, whenever Italy finally returns to the World Cup.

For The Italian Californian, soccer belongs beside food, language, faith, festivals, history, immigration, music, art, and travel as part of the larger Italian experience.

The story of Italian Americans and soccer is therefore not simply one of rejection.

It is a story of immigration, assimilation, distance, rediscovery, and return.

Perhaps Americans were never incapable of loving soccer.

Perhaps many of us simply needed the game to become accessible, visible, and connected to our own lives.

And perhaps the 2026 World Cup, staged in our own cities and on our own continent, marks the moment when millions of Americans—including Italian Americans—finally begin coming home to the beautiful game.

 

Editorial: A Setback, Not a Separation: Why the U.S.–Italy Friendship Still Matters

By Chris M. Forte
The Italian Californian

The recent public feud between President Donald Trump and Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni has understandably caught the attention of many Americans, Italians, and Italian Americans. Because both leaders have often been viewed as political allies, the disagreement feels more dramatic than an ordinary diplomatic dispute. It has produced headlines, commentary, speculation, and concern about what it might mean for the future of relations between the United States and Italy.

As a travel guide, cultural magazine, and Italian American publication, The Italian Californian stays neutral and nonpartisan. Our purpose is not to take sides in partisan politics, foreign policy disputes, or personality-driven arguments between political leaders. Our mission is to celebrate Italian heritage, encourage travel, promote cultural understanding, support Italian and Italian American communities, and strengthen the living relationship between California, the United States, and Italy.

That is why our view is simple: this feud is a setback, but it is not a separation.

The relationship between the United States and Italy is much bigger than any one president, prime minister, political party, or news cycle. It is rooted in history, immigration, family, culture, trade, faith, food, art, music, military alliance, tourism, education, and millions of personal connections. It lives in the Italian families who crossed the Atlantic and built new lives in America. It lives in American students studying in Rome, Florence, Milan, Bologna, Naples, Palermo, and throughout the Italian peninsula. It lives in Italian businesses investing in the United States and American travelers falling in love with Italy every day. It lives in Little Italys, Italian clubs, Catholic parishes, cultural centers, museums, restaurants, language schools, and festivals across this country.

In fact, this is not the first time relations between the United States and Italy have been strained. One of the most serious crises came in 1891, after a mob in New Orleans lynched eleven Italian immigrants. The incident outraged Italy, caused a major diplomatic rupture, and led to talk of war between the two nations. Italy recalled its representative from Washington, the United States recalled its legation from Rome, and relations remained tense until the matter was finally resolved through diplomacy and compensation to the victims’ families.

That tragic episode is worth remembering today, not to reopen old wounds, but to put current events in perspective. The United States and Italy have been through darker moments than this. They have faced anger, misunderstanding, prejudice, diplomatic breakdown, and even the fear of possible war. Yet the relationship survived. More than that, it grew into one of the great friendships of the modern world.

Political leaders may disagree. Allies sometimes argue. Nations with long friendships still have moments of tension, especially during periods of global instability. But a mature friendship is not measured by the absence of disagreements. It is measured by the ability to move through them without forgetting the deeper bond.

For Italian Americans, this moment is a reminder of our unique role. We are not simply observers of the U.S.–Italy relationship. We are part of it. We are ambassadors, bridges, translators, storytellers, hosts, and heirs to both worlds. Many of us love America deeply because it is our home, our country, and the place where our families built their futures. We also love Italy because it is part of our ancestry, memory, identity, and cultural soul.

To be Italian American is not to choose between America and Italy. It is to carry affection for both. It is to want both nations to prosper. It is to hope that Washington and Rome continue to work together, even when leaders disagree. It is to believe that the relationship between the American people and the Italian people should remain strong, respectful, and enduring.

At The Italian Californian, we believe travel and culture can do what politics often cannot. Travel humanizes. Culture connects. Heritage reminds us that countries are not only governments; they are people, places, stories, landscapes, meals, songs, churches, cemeteries, piazzas, neighborhoods, and families. When Americans visit Italy, they do more than tour monuments. They participate in a relationship. When Italians visit California and the rest of the United States, they do the same.

That is why we will continue to promote Italy to Americans and Italian America to the world. We will continue to write about Italian communities in California, the wider United States, and beyond. We will continue to encourage respectful travel, cultural exchange, historical appreciation, and friendship between the people of both countries.

A political argument can dominate the news for a few days. But the U.S.–Italy relationship has endured wars, migrations, diplomatic disputes, economic changes, and generations of political transition. It has survived because it is not built only in government offices. It is built in families, businesses, classrooms, churches, museums, ports, airports, restaurants, and communities.

President Trump and Prime Minister Meloni may need time to repair their political relationship. Diplomats may need to smooth over words spoken in anger or frustration. But the friendship between Americans and Italians remains stronger than the headlines.

For Italian Americans, our task is not to inflame the argument. Our task is to keep the bridge open.

We love the United States. We love Italy. We want both nations to succeed. We want them to remain friends, allies, and partners. And no temporary feud should make us forget the centuries of history, sacrifice, affection, and shared destiny that bind them together.

Profile: Marianna Gatto: Preserving the Italian American Soul of Los Angeles

 

Marianna Gatto: Preserving the Italian American Soul of Los Angeles

By Christopher Forte

The Italian Californian

For anyone who cares about Italian American history in California, the name Marianna Gatto deserves to be remembered with gratitude and respect. As Executive Director and Co-Founder of the Italian American Museum of Los Angeles, Marianna helped turn a long-neglected dream into a living cultural institution. Through her leadership, historic Italian Hall in Downtown Los Angeles became more than an old building. It became a museum, a gathering place, a classroom, and a monument to the Italian American story in Southern California.

The Board of Directors of the Italian American Museum of Los Angeles recently announced that Marianna Gatto will step down as Executive Director at the end of June 2026. Their announcement described her as “the heart and soul of IAMLA since its very beginning,” and that phrase seems exactly right. What is today a vibrant museum preserving and sharing the history of Italian Americans in Los Angeles began with vision, persistence, fundraising, advocacy, and a deep belief that this story mattered.

Marianna Gatto is a Los Angeles native, historian, author, educator, and museum leader. She has spent decades working in public history, nonprofit leadership, museums, education, preservation, and Italian American cultural advocacy. Her work with IAMLA began long before the museum opened its doors. She began working on the museum project in 2005, helped lead the campaign to restore historic Italian Hall, and became director of the museum in 2010. In 2016, the Italian American Museum of Los Angeles officially opened to the public inside the restored Italian Hall, a 1908 building that once served as a social and cultural center for the Italian community of Los Angeles.

Los Angeles is not always the first place people think of when they hear the words “Italian American history.” Many people think of New York, Boston, Philadelphia, Chicago, or New Orleans. But Italian Americans have been part of Los Angeles from its earliest history, and the Italian presence in Southern California is far deeper than many people realize. That is part of what makes Marianna’s work so important. She helped remind Los Angeles, and the wider Italian American community, that California has its own Italian American story.

I had the privilege of meeting Marianna once, years ago, when the Italian American Museum of Los Angeles was still under construction. She gave me a private tour of the future museum space, and even then I could sense the importance of what was being built. It was not just about walls, display cases, or old photographs. It was about memory. It was about restoring a place where our ancestors once gathered and giving future generations a way to understand who they were, what they built, and how they shaped Los Angeles.

That tour stayed with me. At the time, the museum was still a work in progress, but Marianna spoke about it with the kind of seriousness, knowledge, and passion that made it clear this was not simply a job for her. It was a calling.

Under her leadership, IAMLA opened its award-winning permanent exhibition and developed into one of the most important Italian American cultural institutions in the western United States. According to the Board’s announcement, Marianna led the campaign to restore Italian Hall, opened the museum in 2016, created the museum’s award-winning permanent exhibition, mounted eleven original temporary exhibitions, built a collection of thousands of photographs, artifacts, and oral histories, and helped offer public programs reaching audiences across Los Angeles and beyond.

That is a remarkable legacy.

Marianna has also authored and curated exhibitions exploring the Italian American experience from many angles: immigration, identity, women’s work, food, invention, entertainment, regional traditions, and the wider Italian diaspora. Her work has helped move Italian American history beyond nostalgia and into serious public history. It has shown that Italian Americans were not only participants in Los Angeles history, but builders of it.

Her scholarship also extends beyond the museum walls. She is the author of The Italian Americans of Los Angeles: A History, a major contribution to the study of Italian American life in Southern California. She has appeared in documentaries, spoken widely, consulted on historical projects, and helped educate the public about the Italian American experience in Los Angeles and beyond. In recognition of her work, the Italian Republic awarded her the title Cavaliere dell’Ordine della Stella d’Italia, Knight of the Order of the Star of Italy.

But perhaps her greatest achievement is that she helped give Los Angeles Italian Americans a mirror. For generations, Italian Americans in Southern California often lacked a central institution telling their story. Families remembered pieces of it. Churches, restaurants, wineries, clubs, and neighborhoods preserved fragments of it. But IAMLA brought those fragments together and gave them a home.

Historic Italian Hall itself is part of that story. Built in 1908, it stands in the area that was once Los Angeles’ Little Italy. Today, surrounded by the movement and noise of modern Downtown Los Angeles, it remains a witness to another time: a time of immigrant families, mutual aid societies, feast days, weddings, political meetings, dances, music, food, work, faith, and community. Through Marianna’s leadership, that building was not only restored. It was given a voice again.

The Board has announced that Theresa Camille Adile Metzler, a member of the Executive Committee of the Board of Directors, will serve as Interim Executive Director. A search for a new Executive Director is expected to begin in the fall of 2026. This transition comes as IAMLA prepares to mark an important milestone: the 10-year anniversary of the museum’s grand opening and ribbon-cutting ceremony at its historic 1908 site in Downtown Los Angeles.

That anniversary should be a moment not only to celebrate the museum, but also to honor Marianna Gatto’s extraordinary contribution. Institutions do not build themselves. They require people willing to fight for them, raise money for them, explain their importance, endure setbacks, and keep going when the dream seems far away. Marianna did that.

For Italian Americans in California, IAMLA is more than a museum. It is proof that our story belongs here. It is proof that Italian American history in Los Angeles is not a footnote. It is part of the city’s foundation. It is part of California’s story. It is part of America’s story.

As Marianna Gatto steps into her next chapter, she leaves behind something lasting. She helped preserve the memory of those who came before us, and she helped create a place where future generations can encounter that memory for themselves.

Grazie, Marianna, for your vision, your scholarship, your perseverance, and your service to the Italian American community.

The Italian American Museum of Los Angeles is located at 644 North Main Street, Los Angeles, CA 90012. Admission is free, with donations encouraged. Readers are encouraged to visit, support the museum, and continue the work of preserving and sharing the rich history of Italian Americans in Los Angeles.

A Traveler’s History of Italy and the Italian American Journey From Ancient Italy to the Great Migration

A Traveler’s History of Italy and the Italian American Journey

From Ancient Italy to the Great Migration

Italy is more than a country on a map. It is a civilization of layers.

For travelers, Italy can feel almost overwhelming: Roman ruins beside modern streets, medieval towers above busy piazzas, Renaissance churches filled with art, seaside villages, mountain towns, ancient temples, Catholic processions, local dialects, regional foods, and family names that carry centuries of memory. To understand Italy, even briefly, one must understand that it was not born all at once. It was formed over thousands of years by many peoples, cultures, kingdoms, city-states, foreign powers, and migrations.

Long before there was an Italy, long before Rome, and long before the Italian language, the peninsula was home to prehistoric peoples. Neanderthals and early modern humans lived in caves, hunted in valleys and mountains, gathered along rivers and coastlines, and left behind tools, bones, carvings, and traces of their lives. Later, farming communities spread through the peninsula. Villages formed. Pottery, agriculture, animal husbandry, trade, and metalworking changed daily life.

By the Bronze Age, Italy already contained remarkable cultures. In Sardinia, the Nuragic civilization built massive stone towers called nuraghi, some of the most distinctive prehistoric monuments in Europe. In northern Italy, communities developed along the Po Valley. In Sicily, ancient peoples such as the Sicani, Sicels, and Elymians lived before Greek and Phoenician colonists arrived. Italy was never empty, and it was never simple. From the beginning, it was a meeting place.

By the early first millennium B.C., the peninsula was home to many peoples. The Etruscans built one of Italy’s first great urban civilizations in central Italy, especially in what is now Tuscany, northern Lazio, and parts of Umbria. They influenced early Rome in religion, architecture, symbols of authority, engineering, and political culture. The Greeks founded colonies in southern Italy and Sicily, creating a region known as Magna Graecia, or “Greater Greece.” These Greek cities brought art, philosophy, theater, trade, and urban life to the south.

Other peoples shaped ancient Italy as well: the Latins of Latium, the Sabines, Samnites, Umbrians, Ligurians, Veneti, Picentes, Messapians, Lucani, Bruttii, and Celtic peoples of the north. Before Rome became powerful, Italy was a patchwork of tribes, languages, cities, villages, alliances, and rivalries.

Rome began as a small Latin settlement near the Tiber River. According to legend, it was founded in 753 B.C. by Romulus, who gave the city its name. The early Romans were influenced by neighboring peoples, especially the Etruscans. Rome first had kings, then became a republic, and eventually grew into an empire.

The Romans conquered the Italian peninsula through war, alliances, colonization, roads, citizenship policies, and military discipline. Once Italy was under Roman control, Rome expanded across the Mediterranean. It defeated Carthage, conquered Greece, absorbed Egypt, ruled Gaul, reached Britain, and stretched deep into the Near East and North Africa. Roman law, roads, engineering, architecture, language, military organization, and political ideas shaped the Western world.

Italy was the heart of this Roman world. Rome was the capital of the empire, and the peninsula benefited from roads, cities, villas, ports, aqueducts, amphitheaters, temples, and trade. Latin became the language of government and culture. Over time, Latin would evolve into the Romance languages, including Italian, French, Spanish, Portuguese, and Romanian.

Christianity transformed Italy just as deeply as Rome had. The city of Rome became the center of the Catholic Church. The pope, as Bishop of Rome, became one of the most important religious figures in world history. Churches, monasteries, saints, relics, pilgrimages, and religious festivals became central to Italian life. Even today, one cannot understand Italian culture without understanding the role of Catholicism, whether in grand basilicas, village shrines, feast days, patron saints, processions, or family traditions.

After the fall of the Western Roman Empire in 476 A.D., Italy did not disappear. It changed hands. The Ostrogoths ruled first, followed by the Byzantines, who tried to restore Roman imperial control from Constantinople. Then came the Lombards, a Germanic people who gave their name to Lombardy. The Franks entered Italy, and Charlemagne was crowned emperor in Rome in the year 800. The pope became not only a spiritual leader but also a temporal ruler over the Papal States in central Italy.

For centuries, Italy remained politically divided. Southern Italy and Sicily followed one path, shaped by Byzantines, Arabs, Normans, Germans, Angevins, Aragonese, Spaniards, Austrians, and Bourbons. Northern and central Italy followed another path, with powerful city-states, duchies, republics, and papal territories.

This division helped create Italy’s incredible regional diversity. Venice became a maritime republic and a gateway to the eastern Mediterranean. Genoa became a naval and commercial power. Florence became a center of banking, textiles, art, and the Renaissance. Milan became a powerful northern state ruled by families such as the Visconti and Sforza. Naples became the great capital of the south. Sicily developed its own layered identity, shaped by Greeks, Romans, Byzantines, Arabs, Normans, Spaniards, and Italians. Rome remained the eternal city, the home of the papacy and the memory of empire.

The Renaissance made Italy the cultural capital of Europe. Artists, architects, writers, scientists, and thinkers transformed the world. Dante helped shape the Italian language. Petrarch and Boccaccio helped revive classical learning. Brunelleschi changed architecture. Leonardo da Vinci, Michelangelo, Raphael, Titian, Botticelli, and countless others created works that still draw travelers from around the world. Machiavelli studied power and politics. Galileo challenged older understandings of the universe.

Yet Renaissance Italy was also a land of rivalry, war, assassinations, mercenary armies, foreign invasions, and political instability. Its brilliance did not mean unity. In fact, Italy’s wealth and division made it a target. France, Spain, the Holy Roman Empire, and later Austria all fought for influence over the peninsula. For much of the early modern period, large parts of Italy were ruled or dominated by foreign powers.

Modern Italy was born in the nineteenth century during the Risorgimento, the movement for Italian unification. Patriots, soldiers, monarchists, republicans, liberals, and revolutionaries all played a role. Giuseppe Mazzini preached Italian nationalism and republican ideals. Giuseppe Garibaldi became the great soldier-hero of the movement. Count Camillo di Cavour used diplomacy and statecraft to strengthen Piedmont-Sardinia. King Victor Emmanuel II became the monarch around whom unification was achieved.

In 1861, the Kingdom of Italy was proclaimed. Venice joined in 1866. Rome was taken in 1870 and became the capital of the new nation. For the first time since antiquity, most of the peninsula was united under one Italian state.

But political unification did not instantly create prosperity or unity. Italy was still deeply divided by region, class, language, dialect, and economy. Many people identified first with their town, province, or region rather than with the new national state. Northern Italy and southern Italy faced very different economic realities. In much of the south and Sicily, poverty, limited land, high taxes, debt, natural disasters, and lack of opportunity pushed people to look elsewhere.

This is where the Italian American story begins.

From the late nineteenth century into the early twentieth century, millions of Italians left their homeland. Some went to Argentina, Brazil, Uruguay, Canada, Australia, France, Switzerland, Germany, and other parts of Europe. But for many, the great destination was the United States. America became a dream, a gamble, and sometimes a necessity.

They called it L’America.

Between the 1880s and the early 1920s, millions of Italians crossed the Atlantic. Many arrived through Ellis Island in New York Harbor, the great gateway of American immigration. Earlier Italian immigrants often came from northern regions, but the largest wave came from southern Italy and Sicily. They came from Campania, Calabria, Basilicata, Abruzzo, Molise, Puglia, and Sicily, as well as other regions across the peninsula.

They did not arrive as one uniform people. Many did not speak standard Italian. They spoke Neapolitan, Sicilian, Calabrese, Barese, Abruzzese, Venetian, Ligurian, Piedmontese, and many other regional languages and dialects. Some may have thought of themselves more as Sicilian, Calabrian, Neapolitan, Genovese, Tuscan, or Abruzzese than simply “Italian.” In America, however, they were increasingly grouped together as Italians.

Their journey was rarely romantic. Many traveled in steerage, crowded into ships under difficult conditions. They left behind parents, spouses, children, villages, farms, churches, graves, and familiar ways of life. Some intended to stay in America permanently. Others were “birds of passage,” hoping to work, save money, return home, buy land, or support family in Italy. Some did return. Many stayed.

Life in the United States was often difficult. Italian immigrants faced poverty, discrimination, dangerous working conditions, crowded tenements, and suspicion from established Americans. They were sometimes treated as racially and culturally inferior, especially southern Italians and Sicilians. They were mocked for their language, religion, food, customs, and poverty. At times they were targets of violence and prejudice.

Yet they endured.

Italian immigrants worked as laborers, fishermen, farmers, miners, stonecutters, railroad workers, construction workers, factory hands, barbers, tailors, shoemakers, grocers, fruit vendors, bakers, cooks, musicians, and small business owners. They helped build roads, bridges, tunnels, railroads, cities, farms, ports, churches, and neighborhoods. They worked with their hands, saved what they could, and built communities from the ground up.

In cities across America, Little Italies formed. These neighborhoods were not simply tourist districts or restaurant rows. They were immigrant worlds. They had churches, mutual aid societies, Italian-language newspapers, bakeries, markets, barbershops, funeral homes, social clubs, political clubs, family networks, and patron saint societies. The Catholic parish often became the heart of the community, especially for immigrants who found comfort in familiar devotions, saints, processions, and feast days.

The festa became one of the most visible expressions of Italian American identity. Processions for saints such as San Gennaro, Saint Anthony, Our Lady of Mount Carmel, Saint Joseph, Saint Rocco, and local patron saints helped immigrants preserve ties to their towns and regions in Italy. Food, music, banners, statues, candles, prayers, and family gatherings kept memory alive.

Over time, Italian immigrants and their children became Italian Americans. They learned English. They served in the military. They entered labor unions, politics, law enforcement, education, entertainment, sports, business, the priesthood, and public life. They opened restaurants, markets, bakeries, wineries, construction companies, fishing businesses, farms, newspapers, and cultural organizations. They became part of the American mainstream while keeping a living connection to the old country.

California has a special place in this story.

Italian immigrants came to San Francisco, San Jose, Sacramento, Los Angeles, San Pedro, San Diego, the Central Valley, the North Coast, the wine country, and many smaller towns. In San Francisco’s North Beach, Italians helped build one of the most famous Italian American neighborhoods in the West. In San Pedro, Italian and Dalmatian fishermen helped shape the harbor community. In San Diego, Italian families helped build the fishing industry and gave Little Italy its character. In the Central Valley and wine regions, Italians became farmers, winemakers, grocers, and entrepreneurs. In Los Angeles, they built churches, businesses, clubs, and cultural institutions. Across California, Italians helped shape the state’s agriculture, fishing, food, wine, construction, religion, and civic life.

For a travel guide like The Italian Californian, this connection matters. Italian travel is not only about Italy itself. It is also about the roads Italian culture traveled after leaving Italy. To visit Rome, Florence, Venice, Naples, Palermo, Genoa, Milan, or a small ancestral village is one kind of journey. To visit San Diego’s Little Italy, San Francisco’s North Beach, San Pedro, San Jose, or an Italian Catholic parish in California is another. Both are part of the same story.

The Italian diaspora turned Italy from a peninsula into a worldwide civilization of memory. Millions of descendants of Italian immigrants still carry Italian surnames, recipes, devotions, gestures, stories, family legends, and regional pride. Some speak Italian; many do not. Some know the exact village their ancestors came from; others are still searching. Some feel deeply connected to Italy; others are rediscovering it later in life. But the connection remains powerful.

Today, Italy is a modern democratic republic, a member of the European Union, a center of art, fashion, food, design, Catholic heritage, manufacturing, tourism, and regional culture. Yet the old layers remain visible everywhere. In one trip, a traveler can encounter prehistoric caves, Greek temples, Roman amphitheaters, Byzantine mosaics, Lombard churches, Norman castles, medieval towers, Renaissance palaces, Baroque cathedrals, Fascist-era architecture, modern cities, and immigrant memories.

That is what makes Italy unique. It is not one story, but many stories stacked on top of one another.

It is prehistoric and modern.
Roman and Christian.
Northern and southern.
Local and national.
European and Mediterranean.
Ancient and immigrant.
Italian and Italian American.

For those of us in California and across the United States who descend from Italian immigrants, Italy is not only a travel destination. It is a source. It is the place our names, foods, saints, customs, family stories, and cultural instincts often lead back to. But Italian America is not merely a copy of Italy. It is something created through struggle, adaptation, prejudice, pride, work, faith, and love of family.

Italy gave birth to the culture. America changed it. California gave it another home.

That is why the Italian journey is not only about where Italians came from. It is also about where they went, what they built, and how their legacy continues in places far from the villages, cities, farms, and coastlines of the old country.

To travel through Italian history is to travel from caves to Rome, from Rome to the Renaissance, from the Renaissance to unification, from unification to Ellis Island, and from Ellis Island to California.

It is the story of a people who carried Italy with them — in their hands, their prayers, their recipes, their labor, their music, their surnames, and their hearts.

Source note for the migration emphasis: the Library of Congress summarizes the “Great Arrival” of Italian immigration, noting that by 1920 more than 4 million Italians had come to the United States, including more than 2 million in the first decade of the 1900s alone. Ellis Island’s official history notes that more than 12 million immigrants passed through Ellis Island after it opened in 1892. The U.S. Census Bureau estimated that about 16 million people, or 4.8% of the U.S. population, reported Italian ancestry in 2022. (The Library of Congress)

Heart’s Delight – An Orchard Story: Remembering the Italian Orchards of Santa Clara Valley

Before it was known around the world as Silicon Valley, Santa Clara County was known by a very different and much more poetic name: the Valley of Heart’s Delight.

It was a land of orchards, blossoms, farms, canneries, immigrant families, and agricultural communities. Apricots, prunes, cherries, peaches, and other fruits once defined the landscape. Long before glass office towers, tech campuses, and freeways came to dominate the region, the valley was shaped by growers, pickers, packers, cannery workers, and family farms.

Many of those families were Italian.

On Sunday, August 2, 2026, the Museo Italo Americano in San Francisco will present Heart’s Delight – An Orchard Story, a documentary that brings this world back to life through the story of Sicilian immigrant Stefano Messina and the generations of orchard families who helped shape Santa Clara Valley before the rise of Silicon Valley.

The event will take place at 3:30 PM at the Museo Italo Americano, located at Fort Mason Center, Building C, 2 Marina Blvd., San Francisco, CA 94123. The film will be followed by a question-and-answer session with Marilyn Messina, who will discuss the making of the documentary. Light refreshments will be served.

The Valley Before Silicon Valley

For many Californians today, it is difficult to imagine San Jose and Santa Clara County as farmland. The name “Silicon Valley” has become so powerful that it often erases what came before it.

But for much of the 19th and 20th centuries, this region was one of the great agricultural centers of California. The valley was famous for its orchards and fruit production. In springtime, blossoms covered the landscape. In harvest season, families and workers labored in the orchards and canneries. The valley was not only a place of production, but a place of community, memory, and identity.

This was the world remembered in Heart’s Delight – An Orchard Story.

The documentary follows the journey of Stefano Messina, a Sicilian immigrant whose family became part of the agricultural life of Santa Clara Valley. Through rare stories, personal memories, and beautiful imagery, the film preserves the spirit of a landscape that has largely disappeared.

It tells a story of immigration, work, family, land, and change.

The Italian American Orchard Story

The Italian American story in California is often told through the lens of cities: North Beach in San Francisco, Little Italy in San Diego, San Pedro in Los Angeles, and Italian neighborhoods in places like San Jose, Oakland, Sacramento, and Fresno.

But there is another Italian Californian story: the story of the land.

Italian immigrants and their descendants played an important role in California agriculture. Some became farmers, orchardists, vineyard workers, nursery owners, vegetable growers, fruit packers, and cannery workers. Others built businesses connected to food, produce, wine, fishing, and distribution.

In Santa Clara Valley, Italian families were part of the agricultural transformation of the region. They brought with them traditions of hard work, family labor, thrift, faith, and a deep connection to the land. Many came from rural villages in Italy and Sicily, where farming was not just an occupation but a way of life.

For families like the Messinas, the orchard was more than a business. It was home. It was memory. It was sacrifice. It was the American dream rooted in California soil.

From Sicily to Santa Clara County

The story of Stefano Messina is especially meaningful because it reflects the larger journey of so many Sicilian and southern Italian immigrants who came to America looking for opportunity.

They arrived in a country that did not always welcome them easily. Many faced poverty, prejudice, language barriers, and hard labor. Yet they built lives, raised families, bought land, opened businesses, joined parishes, created mutual aid networks, and contributed to the growth of California.

In the Santa Clara Valley, families like the Messinas helped cultivate the orchards that gave the region its beloved nickname. Their work was part of a larger agricultural civilization that existed before the tech boom changed the valley forever.

Today, when we hear the words “Silicon Valley,” we think of innovation, computers, venture capital, and global technology. But before that, there was another kind of innovation: irrigation, grafting, harvesting, preserving, packing, shipping, and sustaining a family through the rhythms of the land.

That older world deserves to be remembered.

Why This Film Matters

Events like this matter because they help preserve local Italian American history before it fades away.

Too often, the story of Italian Americans in California is reduced to restaurants, festivals, food, and nostalgia. Those things are important, but they are only part of the story. Italian Americans also helped build California’s farms, cities, churches, labor force, neighborhoods, civic institutions, and cultural life.

Heart’s Delight – An Orchard Story appears to be one of those documentaries that does something deeply important: it takes a family story and uses it to illuminate a regional history.

Through one family’s memories, we are invited to remember an entire valley.

We are reminded that California’s Italian American heritage is not only found in Little Italies or urban neighborhoods. It is also found in orchards, vineyards, ranches, farms, canneries, gardens, and old family homes. It is found in the hands of immigrants who worked the land and in the descendants who now preserve their stories.

The Museo Italo Americano’s Role

The Museo Italo Americano has long served as one of California’s most important institutions dedicated to Italian and Italian American art, history, and culture.

Located in San Francisco, the Museo provides a home for exhibits, lectures, films, community programs, and cultural events that connect Italian heritage with the broader American experience. By presenting Heart’s Delight – An Orchard Story, the Museo is helping bring attention to a vital part of Northern California’s Italian American past.

This event is also made possible through the support of Ken Borelli and the Italian American Heritage Foundation of San Jose, an important organization connected to the Italian American community in the very region where this story took place.

That connection matters. This is not distant history. It is local history, family history, and community memory.

Event Details

Event: Heart’s Delight – An Orchard Story
Date: Sunday, August 2, 2026
Time: 3:30 PM
Location: Museo Italo Americano
Address: Fort Mason Center, Building C, 2 Marina Blvd., San Francisco, CA 94123
Program: Documentary screening, Q&A with Marilyn Messina, and light refreshments

Reserve your spot here:
https://sfmuseo.org/event/hearts-delight/

Final Thoughts

The transformation of Santa Clara Valley into Silicon Valley is often presented as a story of progress. In many ways, it is. The region became one of the most influential centers of technology and innovation in the world.

But progress also comes with loss.

The orchards are mostly gone. The blossoms that once filled the valley have disappeared from much of the landscape. Family farms gave way to suburbs, office parks, and tech campuses. Many younger Californians have no memory of the agricultural world that came before.

That is why Heart’s Delight – An Orchard Story is so important.

It reminds us that before Silicon Valley, there was the Valley of Heart’s Delight. Before the tech giants, there were orchard families. Before the digital revolution, there were immigrants like Stefano Messina, who helped cultivate the land and build a future for their children.

For Italian Californians, this is our story too.

It is a story of Sicily and San Jose, of orchards and opportunity, of family and memory, of old California and new California. It is a reminder that our heritage is not only something we inherit. It is something we must preserve, share, and pass on.

 

The Italian Ideas Behind America’s Founding: NIAF to Host Virtual Discussion Ahead of America’s 250th Anniversary

As the United States approaches its 250th anniversary in 2026, Americans are being invited to look more deeply at the ideas, people, and traditions that helped shape the birth of our Republic. For Italian Americans, this anniversary is also an opportunity to remember something too often overlooked: Italian thought helped influence the American founding.

The National Italian American Foundation, known as NIAF, will host a special virtual discussion titled “The Italian Ideas Behind America’s Founding” on Wednesday, June 24, 2026, at 12 noon Eastern Time. The event is free and open to the public and will take place online via Zoom.

This timely program is part of NIAF’s Leandro P. Rizzuto, Sr. Capitol Hill Program and will explore the influence of Italian political and legal thinkers on the American Revolution, the Constitution, and the broader ideals of liberty, justice, and individual rights.

Italy and the American Founding

When most Americans think about the intellectual roots of the United States, they usually think of English, French, and Scottish Enlightenment thinkers. Names like John Locke, Montesquieu, and Adam Smith are often mentioned in classrooms and history books.

But Italy’s contribution deserves a place in that conversation too.

Long before Italy became a unified nation in 1861, the Italian peninsula was home to scholars, jurists, philosophers, reformers, and political thinkers whose ideas traveled across Europe and the Atlantic world. Their writings helped shape debates about criminal justice, religious liberty, constitutional government, human dignity, and the limits of state power.

Among the figures NIAF will highlight are Cesare Beccaria, Gaetano Filangieri, and Filippo Mazzei.

Beccaria, one of the great figures of the Italian Enlightenment, is best known for his work on criminal justice reform. His arguments against torture and cruel punishment helped influence later ideas about due process, proportional punishment, and the rights of the accused. These principles remain deeply connected to the American legal tradition.

Filangieri, a Neapolitan legal and political thinker, wrote about constitutional government, law, commerce, education, and liberty. His work was known to important Americans of the founding era and reflected the kind of transatlantic exchange of ideas that shaped the modern democratic world.

Mazzei, a Tuscan physician, merchant, writer, and friend of Thomas Jefferson, is one of the most fascinating Italian figures connected to early American history. He supported the American cause and wrote passionately about equality and liberty. For Italian Americans, Mazzei stands as a powerful reminder that the Italian presence in America’s story did not begin only with the great immigration waves of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Italians were connected to the American project from the beginning.

A Forgotten Chapter Worth Remembering

This is exactly the kind of history we need to recover and teach more often.

Italian Americans are sometimes told that our story in this country begins only with Ellis Island, Little Italies, hard labor, prejudice, and eventual assimilation. That story is real and important. Our ancestors built railroads, worked in factories, opened grocery stores, fished the coasts, farmed the valleys, laid bricks, started businesses, raised families, filled parishes, and fought in America’s wars.

But there is an older story too.

The Italian contribution to America is not only found in food, music, art, family life, Catholic parishes, and neighborhood traditions. It is also found in ideas. Italian thinkers helped shape the moral and legal vocabulary of the modern world. Their writings about freedom, justice, law, equality, and government helped influence the age of revolutions, including the American Revolution.

As an American of Italian descent, I find that deeply meaningful.

It reminds us that Italian heritage is not something separate from American patriotism. It is part of the larger American story. We do not have to choose between loving America and honoring Italy. There is room in our hearts for both. I am an American first, but I can also recognize that the land of my ancestors contributed something profound to the ideals of the country I love.

The NIAF Program

The discussion will be moderated by Viviana Mazza, U.S. Correspondent for Corriere della Sera.

The featured speakers will include:

Professor John Bessler, an internationally recognized scholar of Cesare Beccaria and the history of criminal justice reform.

Professor Amedeo Arena, a legal historian and expert on Gaetano Filangieri and the exchange of political ideas between Italy and the United States.

Together, they will explore how Italian Enlightenment thought helped shape the American Republic and why these connections still matter as the nation prepares for its semiquincentennial commemoration.

Event Details

Event: The Italian Ideas Behind America’s Founding
Host: The National Italian American Foundation
Date: Wednesday, June 24, 2026
Time: 12 noon Eastern Time
Location: Online via Zoom
Cost: Free and open to the public

Register here:
https://us02web.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_UycC0HJqSXSzzvPUAMBeqw

NIAF is also an America250 Supporting Partner, making this event especially fitting as the country prepares to mark 250 years since the Declaration of Independence.

Why Italian Americans Should Attend

This program is more than a lecture. It is a chance to reclaim part of our history.

For Italian Americans in California and across the country, events like this help us understand the deeper meaning of our heritage. We are not merely descendants of immigrants who brought recipes, dialects, music, devotions, and family customs. We are also heirs to a civilization that helped shape law, government, art, science, religion, philosophy, and public life.

America’s founding was not created in isolation. It was part of a larger Atlantic conversation about liberty and human rights. Italy was part of that conversation.

As America turns 250, it is worth remembering that the story of the United States includes Italian voices too. Not only in the neighborhoods of New York, Boston, Philadelphia, Chicago, San Francisco, San Diego, and Los Angeles, but also in the intellectual foundations of the Republic itself.

That is a chapter of American history worth learning, sharing, and celebrating.

 

Saint Anthony of Padua: A Feast of Faith, Bread, Lilies, and Italian Devotion in San Diego’s Little Italy

By Chris M. Forte

Every June, Catholics around the world celebrate one of the Church’s most beloved saints: Saint Anthony of Padua. His feast day falls on June 13, but in many parishes, especially Italian parishes and communities, the celebration is often moved to the nearest Sunday so more people can participate.

That was the case last Sunday at Our Lady of the Rosary Catholic Church in San Diego’s Little Italy, where the Feast of Saint Anthony was celebrated during the noon Mass. Since the noon Mass at Our Lady of the Rosary is the parish’s Italian Mass, the festa carried a special cultural and spiritual meaning. It was not only a Catholic devotion. It was also a living expression of Italian faith, memory, and community.

For a parish founded by and for Italian immigrants, the Feast of Saint Anthony is more than a date on the liturgical calendar. It is a reminder of how faith traveled with our ancestors across oceans, how saints became companions in hardship, and how Catholic traditions helped hold immigrant communities together in a new land.

Who Was Saint Anthony of Padua?

Saint Anthony of Padua was born in Lisbon, Portugal, in 1195. His baptismal name was Fernando Martins de Bulhões. Though he came from a noble family and received a strong education, he chose religious life at a young age. He first entered the Augustinian Canons, but after being inspired by the martyrdom of Franciscan missionaries, he joined the Order of Friars Minor, the community founded by Saint Francis of Assisi.

Taking the name Anthony, he became known as a brilliant preacher, teacher, theologian, and defender of the faith. He preached with clarity, courage, and deep love for the poor. His knowledge of Scripture was so profound that Pope Gregory IX reportedly called him a “living ark of the Testament,” a man whose mind and heart were filled with the Word of God.

Saint Anthony died near Padua, Italy, on June 13, 1231, at only 35 or 36 years old. He was canonized less than a year later, one of the fastest canonizations in Church history. In 1946, Pope Pius XII declared him a Doctor of the Church, honoring him as one of the great teachers of Catholic doctrine.

Yet for ordinary Catholics, Saint Anthony is not remembered only as a scholar. He is remembered as a saint close to the people.

He is the saint we ask for help when something is lost. He is the saint whose image often shows him holding the Child Jesus, a lily, or a book. He is the saint many families turn to in moments of worry, need, gratitude, and hope.

The familiar prayer says it simply:

“Saint Anthony, Saint Anthony, please come around. Something is lost and must be found.”

That little rhyme may sound simple, but behind it is a serious Catholic instinct: the belief that the saints are alive in Christ, that they pray for us, and that God’s grace reaches into the ordinary details of human life.

The Customs of Saint Anthony’s Feast

The Feast of Saint Anthony has many customs, especially in Italian, Portuguese, Brazilian, and other Catholic cultures. These traditions vary by region, but several are especially common.

One of the best-known customs is Saint Anthony’s Bread. The tradition is connected to stories of miracles and charity, especially the idea of giving bread or alms to the poor in thanksgiving for favors received through Saint Anthony’s intercession. In many churches, loaves of bread are blessed and distributed on or near his feast day.

This custom reflects something central to Saint Anthony’s life. He was not only a preacher of beautiful sermons. He was a preacher of charity. His devotion was not separated from the poor, the hungry, the suffering, or those who had been forgotten.

Another custom is the blessing or use of lilies, a symbol often associated with Saint Anthony. The lily represents purity, holiness, and the beauty of a life given to God. Many statues and holy cards show Saint Anthony holding a lily along with the Child Jesus.

There are also novenas and special prayers to Saint Anthony. In some places, Catholics pray a thirteen-day devotion leading up to his feast, while others observe the “Thirteen Tuesdays” in his honor. Tuesday became associated with Saint Anthony because of early traditions surrounding miracles at his tomb.

In Italian communities, the feast often became a full festa: Mass, prayers, processions, music, food, family gatherings, and a public expression of faith. These celebrations were not merely ethnic festivals. They were acts of Catholic memory. They brought together the altar, the street, the family table, and the neighborhood.

That is why saints’ feasts mattered so much to Italian immigrants in America. They were a way of saying: We are in a new country, but we have not forgotten who we are. We have not forgotten our faith. We have not forgotten the saints who walked with our parents and grandparents.

Saint Anthony and Italian Catholic Identity

Although Saint Anthony was born in Portugal, he is deeply loved in Italy, especially because of his life, ministry, death, and burial in Padua. To many Italians and Italian Americans, he is simply “Sant’Antonio.”

For generations of Italian families, devotion to Saint Anthony was part of everyday Catholic life. His statue might be found in a parish church, on a family prayer table, or in a grandmother’s home. His name was invoked for lost keys, lost documents, lost opportunities, lost loved ones, and sometimes even lost faith.

This is one of the beautiful things about Catholicism. The Church is universal, but devotion is often local, personal, and familial. A saint born in Portugal becomes beloved in Italy. Italian immigrants bring that devotion to America. Their children and grandchildren continue it in places like New York, Boston, Philadelphia, Los Angeles, San Francisco, and San Diego.

In that sense, Saint Anthony belongs to the whole Church, but he also belongs to the story of Italian America.

His feast reminds us that Italian Catholic identity was never only about food, language, music, or ancestry. Those things matter, but at the heart of the old Italian neighborhoods was the Church. The parish was where people were baptized, married, mourned, educated, organized, and remembered. The saints gave the calendar its rhythm. The festas gave the community its soul.

The Feast at Our Lady of the Rosary in San Diego

Our Lady of the Rosary Catholic Church has long been the spiritual heart of San Diego’s Little Italy. Founded to serve the Italian Catholic community, the parish remains one of the most visible signs of Italian faith in Southern California.

Last Sunday, the parish celebrated the Feast of Saint Anthony during the noon Italian Mass. That detail matters.

In many places, ethnic Catholic traditions have faded or become purely cultural. But at Our Lady of the Rosary, the Italian language still has a place in the life of the parish. The Mass itself becomes a bridge between generations: between the immigrants who built the parish, the children and grandchildren who inherited it, and the newer parishioners and visitors who come to experience its beauty.

To celebrate Saint Anthony at the Italian Mass is to remember that this devotion came to San Diego through real families, real immigrants, real fishermen, real workers, real mothers and fathers, and real Catholics who wanted a church where their language, culture, and faith could live together.

The festa during Mass also keeps the focus where it belongs: on God. Saint Anthony is honored not as an isolated figure, but as a witness to Christ. The Mass is the center. The Eucharist is the center. The saint points beyond himself to Jesus.

That is the Catholic meaning of a feast day. We honor the saint because the saint reveals what God’s grace can do in a human life.

A Tradition Celebrated Every Year

Every year, the Feast of Saint Anthony at Our Lady of the Rosary continues this old pattern of Catholic life. It brings together devotion and heritage, prayer and memory, the Italian language and the universal Church.

For San Diego’s Little Italy, this annual celebration is one of those traditions that quietly preserves the neighborhood’s deeper identity. Little Italy today is known for restaurants, piazzas, apartments, nightlife, tourists, and the famous neighborhood sign. All of that is part of the modern community. But beneath the visible neighborhood is a much older story.

Before Little Italy was a dining destination, it was a working immigrant neighborhood. Before it was a brand, it was a community. Before the patios, wine bars, and condo towers, there were families, fishing boats, processions, parish societies, novenas, baptisms, funerals, and Sunday Mass.

Our Lady of the Rosary keeps that memory alive.

The Feast of Saint Anthony is part of that living memory. It reminds us that Italian American culture is not only something we inherit through blood. It is something we practice. It is something we show up for. It is something we teach, pray, sing, cook, bless, and hand on.

Why Saint Anthony Still Matters

Saint Anthony remains popular because his intercession feels close to ordinary life. People lose things. People lose direction. People lose hope. People lose faith. People lose loved ones. People lose their sense of belonging.

Saint Anthony’s life answers those losses with the Gospel. He tells us that what is truly lost can be found in Christ. He reminds us that faith is not an abstract idea, but a lived relationship with God. He shows us that preaching, charity, humility, and devotion belong together.

For Italian Americans, especially Catholics, his feast is also a reminder that our heritage is not dead. It does not have to be reduced to nostalgia. It can still be lived in the present.

When the Feast of Saint Anthony is celebrated at Our Lady of the Rosary, in Italian, during Mass, in the heart of San Diego’s Little Italy, something beautiful happens. The past and present meet. The old immigrant parish speaks again. The saints are honored. The Eucharist is celebrated. The community remembers who it is.

And Saint Anthony, the humble friar of Padua, continues to do what he has done for centuries: point lost souls back to Christ.

Sant’Antonio di Padova, prega per noi.

Saint Anthony of Padua, pray for us.

Italy Republic Day June 2nd, 2026

 

Two Flags, One Heart: Why Italy’s Republic Day Matters to an Italian American in California

Every June 2, Italy celebrates Festa della Repubblica, Republic Day. It marks the 1946 referendum when Italians, emerging from war and fascism, voted to end the monarchy and become a republic. It was also a defining democratic moment because Italian women voted nationally for the first time.

For Italians in Italy, the day carries the weight of history. In Rome, it is marked with official ceremonies, military honors, and national remembrance. But the meaning of the day does not stop at Italy’s borders. It reaches across oceans, including to Italian Americans here in California.

As an American of Italian descent, I believe I can be proud of Italy’s Republic Day too.

That does not make me less American. It does not divide my loyalty. It does not require me to choose one country over the other. There is room in the heart for both gratitude and ancestry, for both citizenship and heritage, for both the Stars and Stripes and the Tricolore.

I will always be an American first. The United States is my country, my home, and the place where my civic loyalty belongs. But being American does not mean pretending my ancestors came from nowhere. It does not mean closing my eyes to the beauty, sacrifice, art, faith, language, food, music, and democratic rebirth of Italy. A confident American patriot can recognize the good in other nations, especially the nation that shaped the family story before it crossed the Atlantic.

For earlier generations of Italian Americans, that balance was not always easy. During World War II, many Italians in the United States were treated with suspicion as “enemy aliens,” and some faced surveillance, restrictions, or detention. That history matters because it reminds us why today’s freedom to celebrate our roots openly should not be taken for granted.

Today, our patriotism is not under suspicion. We can serve the United States, vote here, raise families here, honor American veterans, celebrate the Fourth of July, and still feel something when we hear the Italian anthem or see the green, white, and red flag raised over a California city hall. That is not divided loyalty. It is the American story itself.

Italy’s Republic Day is worth honoring because it celebrates a people choosing democracy after dictatorship and devastation. It is not simply a celebration of Italy as a place on a map. It is a celebration of renewal, civic courage, and the belief that a nation can choose a better future. Those are values Americans understand deeply.

Here in California, that meaning is not abstract. In 2026, the Consulate General of Italy in Los Angeles scheduled its official National Day event for June 2, 2026. More information is available through the consulate’s announcement here: Consulate General of Italy in Los Angeles, Call for Sponsors 2026.

In Northern California, the Consulate General of Italy in San Francisco announced its 2026 Festa della Repubblica, Italy’s National Day, for June 3, 2026. The official notice can be found here: Consulate General of Italy in San Francisco, Festa della Repubblica 2026.

There are also community celebrations. The Italian Cultural Center of Menlo Park listed La Festa Della Repubblica for Tuesday, June 2, 2026, at 585 Glenwood Avenue, Menlo Park, California. Event details and tickets are available here: La Festa Della Repubblica, Menlo Park.

The weekend after Republic Day, San Francisco’s North Beach will host Festa Italiana on Saturday, June 6, and Sunday, June 7, 2026, at and around the San Francisco Italian Athletic Club, 1630 Stockton Street, San Francisco, CA 94133. The event is described as a free, family-friendly celebration of Italian food, wine, music, culture, and the 105th Statuto Race. More information is available here: Festa Italiana, San Francisco and here: San Francisco Italian Heritage Festival Events.

These events show what Italian American identity looks like at its best. Not nostalgia alone. Not politics alone. Not a costume or a plate of pasta alone. They are public expressions of memory, gratitude, and connection. They say that we know where we live, and we know where our people came from.

For me, Republic Day is a chance to say: I am American, fully and proudly. And because I am American, I am free to honor the Italian roots that helped make me who I am.

I do not need to choose between the two. I can love America as my country and respect Italy as the land of my ancestors. I can celebrate the Fourth of July with my neighbors and Festa della Repubblica with my family and community. One loyalty does not cancel the other.

In fact, the two can strengthen each other. America taught generations of immigrants and their descendants that heritage could survive in freedom. Italy’s Republic Day reminds us that democracy is never automatic. It has to be chosen, protected, and renewed.

So on June 2, I celebrate Italy’s Republic Day not as a foreigner pretending to be Italian, and not as an American looking away from home, but as an Italian American in California with two flags in view and one clear heart.

America first, always.

But Italy remembered, honored, and loved.