Boston Outsider / Humor

I came to St. Rocco’s in 1958, when the parish needed another priest who spoke the Neapolitan dialect. Father Scaramucci, the original pastor since 1915, was still here then. The man was a legend. For the first two years after his arrival in the United States, while the church was being constructed, he held Mass for other Italian immigrants in the back room of a salumeria -a delicatessen- and so the local Irish joked by calling him, “Padre Bologna.”

But he became an important man in the community, and now a street, a hospital wing, and a nursing home are named after him. Many who have prayed at his grave claim to have been cured of warts and moles. I lived with Father Scaramucci for ten years in the rectory, and I knew him, “warts and all,” as the saying goes. He sometimes skipped reading his Vespers to watch, “I Love Lucy.” He was addicted to spicy food, often eating a whole jar of pepperoncini at a time. When he would get agita from such imprudence, he would ask for Brioschi, a bicarbonate of soda imported from Italy. He said that Alka Seltzer didn’t help, and if we were out of Brioschi , he would send me to the North End to get the stuff. And he cheated at bocce! If he is ever a candidate for sainthood, I suppose I will have to reveal all this to the Devil’s Advocate.

After Father Scaramucci went to his reward, I became pastor, during the tumultuous aftermath of the Second Vatican Council. Not all of the Council’s reforms were well received. Mrs. Cantalupo, whose husband “Boom-Boom” was a well-to-do cement contractor, despised the Folk Mass we instituted, and she threatened to have the parish guitarist assassinated. She relented in her criticism after I appointed her to be the cook of the monthly Communion Breakfast. She was a difficult woman, but she made a delicious pepper-and-onion frittata.