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Changing St. Gerard’s Clothes AN EXERCISE IN ITALIAN-AMERICAN CATHOLIC DEVOTION AND MATERIAL CULTURE Peter Savastano Devotion to St. Gerard Maiella in Newark, New Jersey is more than 100 years old. It was first brought to Newark during the great migration of 1880–19241 when large numbers of Southern Italians, my own ancestors among them, came to Newark from the regions and provinces in which St. Gerard lived his life. Places such as Potenza province in the region of Basilicata, where St. Gerard was born and grew up, as well as from the small town of Caposele located in Avellino Province in the region of Campania , in which St. Gerard died.2 In Newark, devotion to the saint takes many different forms and has evolved over the years since 1899. Many of these local forms of devotion to St. Gerard are rooted in the vernacular religious practices of Southern Italians in general. However, in Newark, they have become much more elaborate than what was originally practiced or, in fact, is practiced at present at Materdomini, the Redemptorist monastery, where the saint’s tomb is housed; or in the small town of Caposele, where the monastery is located. In general, such Southern-Italian devotional practices include • Making vows to the Madonna and the saints in exchange for supernatural assistance • Carrying an image of the Madonna or the saints (in this case, St. Gerard) in procession through the streets of one’s village, town or city • Having a festa (street feast) in honor of the Madonna or the saints (A festa usually takes place simultaneously with a procession) • Pinning money to the image or statue (in the case of St. Gerard, specifically, this practice has evolved to include the weaving of elaborate capes, blankets, and/or long ribbons of money which are then wrapped around the statue of the saint) • Dressing oneself or one’s children as the saint and walking in the procession dressed as such • Walking barefoot in the procession or enduring some other ordeal to demonstrate the severity of one’s need or the intensity of one’s devotion or gratitude to the saint for answered prayers3 In addition to these practices and as part of the annual observance of St. Gerard’s feast day on October 16, and approximately for over 88 years now, a small group of devotees of St. Gerard Maiella4 gather at his National Shrine located at St. Lucy’s Roman Catholic 171 172 Peter Savastano Church in Newark, New Jersey to change the clothes in which the statue of the saint is dressed.5 Who Is St. Gerard Maiella? St. Gerard Maiella was a lay brother in the Congregation of the Most Holy Redeemer (Redemptorists), founded by St. Alphonsus de Liguori in the Kingdom of Naples in 1732. Official approval for the order’s existence was given by Rome in 1749.6 Born on April 6, 1726, in the small town of Muro Lucano in Potenza province, in the region of Basilicata, St. Gerard is as much a local saint as he is a global one. He lived most of his adult religious life primarily in Avellino province in the region of Campania. While still alive, Brother Gerard Maiella was a wonderworker, ascetic, and reader of human hearts.7 He died at the age of 29 from tuberculosis just a few minutes before the stroke of midnight on October 16, 1755, (technically, the last few minutes of October 15) at the Redemptorist monastery of Materdomini located on a hill overlooking the small town of Caposele. He was beatified by Pope Leo XIII on January 29, 1893, and subsequently canonized a saint on December 11, 1904, by Pope Pius X.8 The National Shrine of St. Gerard at St. Lucy’s Church in Newark The statue of St. Gerard is housed at the saint’s National Shrine in what was once the heart of Newark’s Little Italy. Established in 1891, St. Lucy’s Church was historically an ‘‘ethnic’’ parish whose mission was to serve Italian immigrants and their descendants. As is the case with many ethnic communities, even though most of the Italians, and now Italian Americans, that St. Lucy’s originally served no longer live in the neighborhood , St. Lucy’s still maintains its Italian and Italian-American identity. As such, St. Lucy’s also continues to serve the descendants of the original Italian immigrants who settled in the Old First Ward of Newark, the small number of Italian...

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