From Italian Villages to Greenwich Village: Our Lady of Pompei, 1892-1992

Our Lady of Pompei began as a chapel serving Italians in transit through New York Harbor. It anchored a community of Genoan Immigrants in Greenwich Village, and assisted Italian-born parents in raising their American-born offspring in this new environment. Since the 1960s, when Vatican II changed Catholicism and urban renewal changed Greenwich Village, Pompei has endured, both as a shrine to rosary devotion and the immigrant religious experience as well as a house of service to Villagers today. Pompei’s laity and clergy generated an extraordinary array of records, which make it possible to use the parish as a model for ethnic urban pastoral care and community building. Written in a style accessible to interested lay readers, and accompanied by the notes and bibliographies scholars require, From Italian Villages to Greenwich Village suits many needs.