Among Italian Americans, Catholicism has endured the tradition from generation to generation longer than language, culinary traditions or craftsmanship. Events such as weddings, baptisms, and religious feasts bring to the church even those in the community who are not churchgoers. Attending these ceremonies is a matter of tradition as well as a matter of religion. All the generations still alive come together for the celebrations, which provide an insight into the Italian American culture.

Built in the early Seventies in the heart of the Italian enclave of Bensonhurst, Saint Dominic over the years has become a reference point for the last wave of Italian immigrants in the area.

Through the documentation of religious feasts, baptisms and weddings, the project visually explores the role that this small church, which is the only church in Brooklyn that still offers a daily mass in Italian, plays for the Italian American community left in a neighborhood that is slowly but steadily losing its Italian ethnic soul.

In 1970, in fact, Italians comprised more than 40 per cent of the population in Bensonhurst. In 1980, Italy was the birthplace of the greatest number of New York City’s foreign born, but by the mid-1980s Italian immigrants had gone down to 26th place. With a whole generation of immigrants fading away and no newcomers on the horizon, the disappearance of ethnic Italian churches is inevitable.



Since the beginning, Saint Dominic’s boundaries have contained such high numbers of Italian speaking people that a daily mass in Italian became a necessity. The tradition has consolidated over the years and today the parish is well attended also by second and third-generation Italian Americans who feel particularly attached to their Italian roots.