(upbeat music) - Welcome back, folks.

We welcome Marylou and Jerome Bongiorno, filmmakers at Bongiorno Productions, who put together a two-part documentary series.

It's called "American Women Saints," Elizabeth Ann-Seton and Frances Xavier Cabrini.

It aired on PBS, a whole bunch of other places.

Good to see you, Marylou and Jerome.

How we doing?

- Great.

Great to be here.

- Great, Steve.

- Thank you.

- Thanks a lot.

- You've been with us many times talking about your films.

Who are these two women and why are they so important to make this film?

Marylou?

- Well, Elizabeth Ann-Seton was born in the United States in the late 1700s.

She was born into wealth, and she became a widowed mother of five children.

So, after she converted from being a Protestant to a Catholic, she founded a school and a Catholic congregation of women called The Sisters of Charity, educated St. Peter's School by these powerhouse women.

- Marylou, where did we go to grammar school?

- St. Peter's School in Belleville New Jersey.

- St. Peter's, and who, and the nuns heading them up.

The Sisters of Charity.

- Yes.

- Do you remember sister Mary Lois?

- Absolutely.

I was gonna say-- - Okay.

sorry.

I'm sorry.

I won't go down that road.

Okay.

And tell us about the Mother Cab...

I call her Mother Cabrini.

Why do I call her Mother Cabrini?

- Yes.

Because it's common for both actually.

- Who was Cabrini?

Give us more on Cabrini.

- Yes.

So, born in Italy in the mid 1800s, also born into privilege.

She founded the congregation of the Missionary Sisters of the Sacred Heart of Jesus.

But she is most, for me, very close and noted for the fact that she was sent from Italy to New York to the United States to help the Italian immigrants assimilate.

So, while she's here doing all this great work, she became a major real estate developer.

Constantly establishing schools, hospitals, orphanages and the most notable, of course, is Columbus Hospital.

Columbus-- - 13th Street.

In the old neighborhood on 13th Street in Newark, right?

- Yes, that's right.

- She was a key to that?

- Absolutely.

So, she was instrumental in taking the realm in the (indistinct) and creating this space for Italian immigrants to not only have Italian food served at these hospitals and have Italian speaking doctors, and dispensing all these supplies like food and medicines.

She really was holistic in her approach and a major, major real estate developer.

- Yeah.

She had three hospitals built.

One in New York, one in Chicago, and eventually one got built in Seattle.

And these weren't small hospitals.

These were major state-of-the-art hospitals.

So she was a bona fide real estate developer.

- Lemme put this in perspective.

I should disclose that Marylou and I grew up in the same neighborhood in Newark, New Jersey on Tiffany Boulevard.

Her brother Dominic and I grew up together.

And there's a whole group of us in the old neighborhood, if you will.

Columbus Hospital, where I was born it was disproportionately Jerome and Marylou.

It was for, largely for Italian Americans.

My grandparents who came from Naples, that's where the only place they would go.

There were Italian American doctors where you couldn't find anywhere else.

This hospital was a key to the community right Jerome?

- Yeah.

You have to do that for communities.

Whoever lives in the community, you have to serve those people.

And for Italian Americans, they didn't speak English.

So, you had to have the English speaking or you had to have Italian speaking doctors.

Otherwise, doctors can't figure out what's going on with them.

- Yeah.

Marylou do this for us.

Put Elizabeth Ann Seton in context and be clear on the Seton Hall University is named after Elizabeth Ann Seton.

Most people don't know that.

What made her such a powerful and effective leader, please?

- Well, I think both of these women, but I'll speak to Mother Seton.

She was a strong-willed woman who gave up this privileged life, but had benefited from all that privilege.

She was highly educated, she was well connected.

Alexander Hamilton being a neighbor.

Marrying into the Seton a merchant family.

I mean she had it all.

And also these five children.

And that was a condition for her to start her order that she was going to continue to be a mother to these children.

So, she was, and remember, both of these women are in a male dominated patriarchal church, Catholic church.

And they had to assert themselves not being in the position even as priests would to have that kind of power.

So, you're talking about leadership and starting, this fledgling group of women and being their model and learning and converting from her faith to the Catholic religion.

- I'm thinking about this right now.

The Catholic church, which we'll not go into.

Whole 'nother story those of us who are raised Catholic.

Let's just say some of us have conflicted feelings.

Let's just leave it at that.

Male dominated more so maybe today than ever.

Question, how could Elizabeth Ann Seton and Francis Cabrini, how could they have, would they have been able to be effective and influential in the church with the Vatican being what the Vatican is today?

Jerome, your thoughts?

- Oh, absolutely.

- Yeah.

- Yeah, I mean their whole thing was to serve others.

So, no matter what the church thinks or what the church thought back then, or it didn't matter to them, they're going to serve others.

And the reason why they served others is because, you, know, God was behind them.

So that made them excited for everything they had to do.

And they weren't worried about the future because they were fearless.

They were fearless once again, because God was behind them.

And that's something else, that's another reason why we made this film.

What are these women thinking?

What should we be thinking?

Not just as Catholics, but what should we be thinking in our lives in order to serve other people?

Shouldn't we be excited about that?

Shouldn't we be fearless about that?

- Yeah.

And I believe that they had their share of challenges then.

And I think that not-- - Yeah.

Yeah.

- If you realize what they we're contending with, yes it was hard.

- How headstrong?

How persistent, gritty, one of my favorite words, grit and headstrong were both of these women, MaryLou?

- Completely.

Devoted to their passions.

Not stopping from going through the channels all the way up to the Vatican, to the Pope to in the case certainly of Mother Cabrini of, persisting in what she wanted.

Pope Leo wanted her to go to the west.

She wanted to go east, she wanted to go to China.

So, she had to work within that structure to get her mission out.

And then, she went global.

I mean she did what she needed to do, and always doing it in such a creative way.

Always using, paying schools or hospitals to fund the hospitals or the schools for the poor.

I mean really just-- - They were entrepreneurial?

Were they entrepreneurial?

- Oh yeah.

- Absolutely.

- Yeah, absolutely.

Look at Cabrini.

What did she do for a lot of her life?

She went after money, 'cause she had to.

If she wanted to create something for the poor, she needed the money to not only create it, but to maintain it.

So, she knew that that was a big deal and she went after it.

- As filmmakers, artist, Steven, I'm sure you could empathize with this.

We're always seeking money.

- No.

- No.

- I have no idea.

I have no idea what you're talking about.

- I know.

We'll put it aside.

And when I read what Mother Cabrini and Seton, Mother Seton did.

Constantly, Seton going to her rich friends and relatives and others.

But Mother Cabrini, she was, she said, I have to get the rich to pay for this, and they should be grateful for this opportunity I'm giving them them to help the poor.

- Yes.

- Let's be clear, there were no foundations at the time.

There were no corporations that were like, "Let us be philanthropic."

They went to rich friends and made the case that it was the right thing to do, a good investment in helping those who had less.

- Absolutely.

- Yes.

- What was in it for these rich people?

- And she met certain key people, like the Chesseles who were the, he was at the time the director of the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

He couldn't share, this was interesting.

He couldn't share his donor list, but she knew and found out that it was public information just like it is today.

And she had her sisters go through that list.

When she saw the name Carnegie, she said, "Oh, I just saw that Carnegie gave this much money to," - Wow.

- "School."

"You go call him up.

Do we know people that know him or to get to him?"

Because she needed this, let's face it, you need resources.

- Hold on, hold on.

I'm gonna be clear on something.

So, I often think it's hard for people to appreciate this.

And by the way, for those who wonder why I'm obsessed with this topic other than where my family came from in Italy, look at our program on Sacco and Vanzetti, you'll get a sense of why I am a bit obsessed.

At the time for Italians, Italian Americans, those who came from Italy, whatever.

To raise money, and I won't use the neighborhood term for the kind of folks we're talking about, the Carnegies.

You know the term.

They're otherwise known as White Anglo-Saxon Protestant WASP.

In our neighborhood, we call them "Medigans" which and you're laughing because you know.

It was Americans who were not ethnic, let's just say.

How the heck did they raise money from people outside of the Italian-American community in these rich, very white, old money, that establishment?

How'd they break into that?

- Yeah, that's a good, that's a great question.

And they had to break into it because usually what you do, if you have a church, if you wanna build your own church, you have to take it from your own people.

And then, these Italians are coming from Sicily poor.

So they're not going.

- That's why they were here in the first place.

- And there's prejudice against them also from Catholics.

- From other Catholics.

- Absolutely.

- Why?

'Cause they were charged, they were charging admission to St. Patrick's Cathedral to go to mass.

- Right.

- Because they knew that the Italian immigrants and others couldn't afford it.

- And what was the prejudice about?

A lot of it, much of it, probably 98% of it was people didn't wanna share work with them.

They didn't wanna share their space with them.

So, and that goes on today.

So, we understand that.

- Obviously when you think of how we treat neighbors and people coming in from other countries.

Absolutely.

- Right.

- Absolutely.

- By the way, check out the Bongiorno documentary on... You did one on the Newark Rebellion riots right?

- Yes.

Revolutionist.

- Benedict's Prep?

- Yes.

The Rule, we have to talk about living saints.

So, you gave us the perfect entry to that because a lot of the reason why we made this film too is because we all know these living saints right here in Newark and many places, but yes.

- Right.

And if you think St. Cabrini at St. Francis, I'm sorry, St. Seton and St. Cabrini aren't the same as those monks down in Newark.

Well then you just don't get it.

- So, you're saying you think Father Edwin Leahy is gonna be a saint soon.

We'll find out.

Okay.

- He already is.

- He already is.

In my book he is.

Listen, by the way, the team is telling me the documentary is now streaming on pbs.org through July.

Check it out.

Marylou, Jerome.

- Through August, end of August.

- My bad.

Okay, so it's fake news.

No, we got that right.

Listen, Marylou and Jerome, thank you so much.

Check out the film.

It's an important one.

It's American Women Saints, Elizabeth Ann Seton and Francis Xavier Cabrini.

Great stuff.

Thanks everyone.

See you.

See you next time folks.

- [Narrator] One-On-One with Steve Adubato is a production of the Caucus Educational Corporation.

Celebrating 30 years in public broadcasting.

Funding has been provided by RWJBarnabas Health.

Let’s be healthy together.

NJM Insurance Group.

The North Ward Center.

Seton Hall University.

The Turrell Fund, a foundation serving children.

Citizens Philanthropic Foundation.

The New Jersey Education Association.

PSEG Foundation.

And by The Fidelco Group.

Promotional support provided by Insider NJ.

And by Meadowlands Media.

The North Ward Center continues to expand their services and outreach in Newark, from the childhood years to the golden years, Offering programs like preschool, youth leadership development, Casa Israel Adult Medical Day program our Family Success center, as well as a gymnasium.

And most recently Hope House, a permanent home for adults with autism, supporting and nurturing our autism community with Hope House 2 coming soon.

The North Ward Center.

We’re here when you need us.