Our Lady of Pompei has 100-year history of serving immigrant communities

Joseph DiSeta cherishes the fact he has been a parishioner of Our Lady of Pompei in Highlandtown for all his 43 years. He’s the great-grandson of an Italian immigrant, and his children are the fifth generation of his family to be baptized and confirmed there.

For 100 years, outreach to immigrants has been a hallmark of the southeast Baltimore faith community – first to the Italian community and now mostly to the Spanish-speaking community that make up about 90 percent of the parishioners. 

During a special June 2 Mass commemorating the 100th anniversary of the first Mass inside the completed church, Archbishop William E. Lori highlighted the faith community’s long history of welcoming others and its commitment to the Eucharist.

“Over this past century, this parish community has had its ups and downs, its moments of triumph and its moments of hardship, but one constant has remained: the presence of the Lord received here at the altar,” he said in his homily. “In recent years, the story of this parish at its founding seems to have come full circle as more recently arrived sisters and brothers have come to this parish, bringing with them their language, Spanish, their culture, and their food – and above all their holy Catholic faith. And this parish has offered to our Spanish-speaking brothers and sisters the same treasure offered to those first Italian parishioners: the Bread of Life, the food for the journey, the Eucharist.”

Father Claudio Piccololongo, pastor for the past five years, calls Our Lady of Pompei a communal congregation made up of about 200 registered families. 

“Most of them have the key to the parish,” said Father Piccololongo, an extern priest of the Diocese of Lamezia Terme, Italy. “They are like a big, big family.”

Cecilia Hopkins, 87, who lives around the corner and has been a member for 50 years, agrees with that assessment. 

She said: “When I first walked through those double doors years ago, I thought, ‘This is the one.’ It was just like the Blessed Mother said, ‘Come on in.’”

Of the clergy, she recalls, “They were all wonderful priests and I could go to them and ask about anything.”

She’s begun to favor the 4 p.m. Saturday Mass. “I still get up early. But you don’t want to go to church looking like a ragamuffin.”

Under the Seek the City to Come plan for revitalizing the Catholic Church in the city, Our Lady of Pompei is scheduled to merge with Our Lady of Fatima in East Baltimore.

It will mark the end of more than 100 years of ministry at Our Lady of Pompei that originally began with the priests of the Congregation of the Mission, commonly known as the Vincentians, conducting missionary work among the city’s Italian immigrants.

The parish was founded Jan. 16, 1923, commemorated by a bull roast last November. The founding pastor of Our Lady of Pompei was Vincentian Father Luigi Scialdone. He came to Baltimore after devoting 17 years to missionary work in China. Baltimore Archbishop Michael J. Curley charged him with uniting a scattered Italian flock. 

The first graduating class of elementary school students consisted of seven pupils in 1929 at the parish school. In 1959, a high school opened. Both schools, founded by the Religious Teachers Filippini, no longer operate at the parish.

Parish leadership in recent decades has included diocesan priests, and then priests of the Italian-led mission group, Operation Mato Grosso – Spanish-speaking clerics who have done work in Peru. 

DiSeta thinks the parish’s original missionary spirit “has never left the church.” That includes “going out into the community and doing service for people in need” and “keeping the young folks in the church past confirmation when they’re in high school” and those vulnerable to drifting away from their faith roots.

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