Pro Deo et Patria: forward Sons of Italy! "Congedo Giuseppe di Galatina, sacerdote in New York" tra emigrazione e fascismo

The experience of Giuseppe Maria Congedo (1883-1954), a priest from Galatina who arrived in New York in 1905, fits into the context of the massive Italian emigration to the United States in the years 1880-1915. Italians, stigmatized as genetically inferior, are not only despised but also considered dangerous because they are mafia or 'subversive' of the democratic order, as anarchists and socialists. The "red scare" rages against them, the fear of a possible Bolshevik revolution leading to numerous arrests in a climate of strong tension, which also affects the parish of the "Sacred Hearts of Jesus and Mary" of father Congedo, where a bomb. To mistrust and prejudice, Don Congedo opposes his educational mission of Italian children in the parish school to facilitate their insertion into American society. The Fascist regime does not escape the propaganda value of the work of Congedo, which is invited several times to take his students to Italy on a reward trip. Congedo was awarded a gold medal for his merits in the "dissemination of Italian culture". Efficient and pragmatic, he has an attitude towards Mussolini not unlike that of the many Italian-Americans who sympathize with the dictatorship, simply because fascism was able to make patriotic pride a response to national humiliations.