Born: 04 July 1844, Modica, Sicily, Italy
Entered: 23 December 1859, Naples Italy - Neapolitanae Province (NAP)
Ordained: July 1875, Toulouse, France
Final Vows: 15 August 1877, Georgetown College, Georgetown, Washington DC, USA
Died: 13 September 1888, St Ignatius College, Las Vegas NM, USA - Neapolitanae Province (NAP)
2nd year Novitiate at Milltown (HIB) under Luigi Sturzo following the expulsion of Jesuits from Naples and Sicily
◆ Woodstock Letters SJ : Vol 17, Number 3
“Obituary: Father Carmelus Polino” p385ff
Fr. Carmelus Polino was born in Modica, Sicily, on the 4th of July, 1844. His father was a Neapolitan officer and was at that time in charge of the garrison at Modica. As soon as young Carmelus was able to go to school, he was placed in one of our colleges, where he soon gave signs of the great talents he possessed and which he afterwards used to such good advantage in the Society. On the completion of his course of studies, he entered the novitiate at Naples, on the 23rd of December, 1859.
The cradle of his religious life was rudely rocked by the hand of persecution and, like many others who have left home to follow Christ, he had to taste the bitter cup of exile. Shortly after his entrance into the Society, the movement for Italian unity broke out and the Jesuits had to leave the kingdom of Naples. Accordingly, in June 1860, all the first-year novices from Sicily and Naples were sent to Ireland. Fr. Sturzo, the present superior of the mission in Australia, took charge of the young exiles, and, on arriving in Ireland, acted as socius to the master of novices. Having completed his noviceship in Ireland and his juniorate in France, Fr. Polino was sent for his philosophy to Tortosa in Spain. Here he imbibed his first love for St. Thomas, which grew with time and which he endeavored so earnestly to instil into the hearts of his pupils at Woodstock. The year following his philosophy was spent in our college of Manresa, after which he was sent to Manilla in the Philippine Islands. After five years of regency, during which he taught mathematics and literature, he returned to Europe to study theology with the scholastics of the province of Aragon. As the Spanish Jesuits had been dispersed by the revolution of 1869, the scholastics of this province were at the villa of St. Cassian, near Toulouse, France. Here he was ordained in July, 1875, by Cardinal Despretz. In 1876, he arrived in America and began his third year of probation at Frederick. On Aug. 15th, 1877, he made his solemn profession at Georgetown and came to Woodstock as professor of philosophy. As such we know him best and owe him a debt of gratitude for his untiring labors for our intellectual improvement, as well as for a religious life whose edifying traits are still fresh in our memory and the more fully appreciated now that he is with us no more. Studious industry, untiring devotedness to his work, humility united to vast erudition, an harmonious blending of religious virtues with an ardent thirst for knowledge, were his distinguishing characteristics. Modest and retiring, so little did he meddle in the affairs of others and so absorbed was he in his own work, he was called the persona (alteri incommunicabilis). But in the lecture-hall we recognized the great metaphysician, where his polished lectures showed a clear and logical mind, well stored with erudition, ns well as au ever faithful memory. He had a natural eloquence which, joined to a diction, made his lectures most enjoyable; and so thoroughly convinced was he of the truth of his subject and so clear was it to his mind that he seemed at times to forget that others could have difficulties about it. He naturally possessed a fiery temper which he held well in check, or if it ever betrayed him and thus disclosed the life-long struggle he him in mastering it, he was most ready to apologize. He travelled much and. being a keen observer, he was a delightful companion in recreation, and his conversation possessed a peculiar charm despite the fact thnt he had but an imperfect knowledge of English. In 1884, he was called to New Mexico and labored as operarius in Denver, Pueblo and Las Vegas. His thorough knowledge of the Spanish language enabled him to render great service as one of the editors of the Revista Catolica. Early in September he was sent to Albuquerque to give a retreat in a convent, where he contracted fever, of which he died at Las Vegas on Sept. 13th, 1888. We learn that he was about to return to Naples to teach philosophy, but his work was done and God called him to the reward of a well-spent life. - R. I. P.
◆ Brokers of Culture
Italian Jesuits in the American West 1848-1919
Gerald McKevitt SJ
Stanford University Press, Stanford, California USA, 2007
ISBN-13: 978-0-8047-5357-9
Chapter 3: Instant Dispatch: The Ideology of Emigration
p37-38
Superiors initially tried, however, to avoid sending seminarians to multi- ple locations, preferring to keep them together for the sake of morale and continuity in schooling. When doing so proved impossible, they compromised by consolidating novices in one place, humanities students in another, and philosophers and theologians in still another locale. The extensive European network of Jesuit residences to which men could be sent facilitated that complex implementation. Bowing to the inevitable, Sicilian Jesuit scholastics, for example, scattered to Ireland, Spain, France, Belgium, and England. Dismayed at the prospect of splitting up classmates and scattering them about, Pietro Fontana, their leader during r857-59, voiced a frustra- tion felt by all the Italian provincials when he lamented, "All Europe has been invaded by Sicilian Jesuits. "
Few Jesuits were as frequently torn up and replanted as the Sicilian Carmelo Polino. Having entered the novitiate in Naples, in 1859, at the age of fifteen, he launched his odyssey a few months later, after revolution broke out, traveling with classmates to Ireland. He completed his humanities course in France, studied philosophy in Spain, taught for five years in the Philippines, returned to study theology in Spain, but was again forced by revolution to go back to France. Finally ordained a priest in Toulouse in 1875, Polino then embarked for the United States, where he completed his formation in Mary- land before teaching philosophy at Woodstock College. Fluent in Spanish, he was summoned to New Mexico ten years later to join the staff of the La Revista Católica, the Jesuits' Spanish language newspaper. Only death four years later prevented Polino from still one more move- a return to Naples to teach philosophy. When he died, three words in his obituary recapitulated his otherwise unextraordinary life: "He traveled much."
Chapter 4: Witnesses to Shortcomings: Reforming Jesuit America
p82
When Woodstock's founders assembled in 1869 to ceremonially open the new seminary, six of the ten professors were Italian. Italians so dominated the place that Pantanella once told the Neapolitan provincial: "Your reverence cannot have colleges in Italy, but console yourself with the one that is in America." Even as they gathered, the armies of united Italy were preparing their final assault on Rome, marking an end to the Papal States and the final expulsion of Jesuits from the new nation. Displacement left its mark on the seminary staff. Almost every member of the first faculty had been touched by revolution and exile, and many of them were long remembered for the ways in which the aftershocks had molded their character. The philosopher Carmelo Polino, for example, impressed upon students that the Risorgimento had "cured him forever of any sympathy he might have had with the republican form of government and made him a staunch defender of absolutism."
Chapter 5: Attracted Towards remote Lands: Becoming Western Missionaries
p101
Their eastern connection also served the frontier missions by training workers. An internship in Massachusetts or Maryland, for instance, gave immigrants an interval in which to adjust to life in America, temper their idealism, and discover if they really wanted a missionary career. It also gave gatekeepers time to assess an individual's aptitude for that vocation. It was while teaching in Maryland that Carmelo Polino, a Neapolitan, demonstrated he was not cut out for missionary work. He is passionate about the academic life, Camillo Mazzella reported to superiors, but he "has no inclination for the Mission," where "he would be one of the most unhappy and useless" of men.
