Fra Noi Embrace Your Inner Italian
On April 18, Casa Italia in Stone Park celebrated the life and legacy of Fr. August Feccia, CS, the founding member of the Italian Cultural Center. According to Dominic Candeloro, when Fr. Feccia arrived on the property in 1970, the ICC didn’t exist. The Scalabrini seminary that was founded in 1935 had closed, leaving an empty shell.
Casa events coordinator Nancy Cometa spoke about her friend and mentor: “Fr. Feccia was ordained in1962 and he celebrated his first Mass in Italy for prison inmates. With this first act he demonstrated his lifelong care for the abandoned and marginalized.
“Arriving in Stone Park, he immediately pursued his vision of an art-filled Italian Cultural Center. He made contacts with wealthy members of the Italian-American community and built relationships with artists and craftsmen who would bring the property back to life, always under his guidance.”
“When I came here much later, Father named me and Anna Giacone the organizers of his pilgrimages,” Cometa said. He brought Our Lady of the New Millennium to Stone Park, she noted, established and ran Radio Maria, and established and ran the charity that would become the Fr. Feccia Charitable Foundation.
“I work in his old office, so I think of him every day,” she said. “In my office is a picture of the Virgin Mary and Baby Jesus that was painted by a prisoner who Father had corresponded with, so he’s always with me.”
