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Italian members of the Society of Jesus, a male religious congregation of the Roman Catholic church played a significant role in the expansion of religious practice and immigrant culture in the United States.  This Society has been present in the New World since the sixteen century, and the influence of Italian Jesuits in the United States reached its peak during the height of Italian immigration during the last half of the nineteenth century and the early twentieth century.  During this period of time, Italian clergy, specifically members of the Society of Jesus (Jesuits) often performed significant pastoral functions within immigrant communities.  “Italian Jesuits served as an institutional and personal bridge between American society and communities on the periphery, including indigineous cultures and recent immigrants.

Jesuits made it their mission to help, inform and educate people of all backgrounds, races, and ethnicities, even though they faced extreme obstacles in the form of anti-Catholic and anti-Jesuit sentiment.  Why did Jesuits come to America and make it their mission to spread their faith, values, and ways of life to American citizens, when some of the people they would be preaching to and interacting with opposed them and vehemently despised them and their ways?