Giacomo Lombardi  

(1862-1934)

labourer, evangelist, church planter, co-founder of denominational pentecostalism in the USA and Italy

Lombardi was born in Prezza, L’Aquila, Italy on 3 October 1862, into a poor family. He originally had little formal education, but registered in census returns that he could read and write, a fact which made his later command of the bible remarkable. (Toppi suggests he was educated through to perhaps second class elementary level.) At some stage, he served his mandatory service in the Italian military, as he later reported that his contacts in Rome were 'commilitone'. In 1888 he and Annunziata Colella (later referred to as 'Nancy', b. 1865) were married. They emigrated to the USA in 1892 with their first two children (Adolfo, 3, and Silveria, 1), and made their way to Chicago, renting a house at 330 S. Desplaines St., west of the river. There would be seven more children born, several of whom (such as William, 1907-1911) died young.  Lombardi found work as a day labourer. His children would largely follow him into the blossoming industry and factory pursuits of the time. 

Despite the inter-regional biases which Italians carried with them (most local Italian protestants originated in the North at this time), Lombardi was spoken to by a number of migrants (including Alberto Di Cicco, b. 1879, Castel San Vincenzo, Abbruzzo - 1956, Chicago; and the founding evangelist Michele Nardi, 1850-1914) who had already converted to protestantism. He was attracted by their warmth and authenticity, and so he attended Filippo Grill's First Italian Presbyterian Church of Chicago. It was there that he was converted to Protestant faith in 1894, and formally joined as a member in December 1895 (FIPC Session Book). This put Lombardi in the midst of the Italian Presbyterian community, where he remained even when Francescon and Beretta led a group out of the church over the issue of adult baptism.  Then Azusa Street happened. Between May and September 1907, members of Francescon's group experienced the Baptism of the Spirit at the North Avenue Mission run by William Durham, recently returned from the Azusa Street outpouring. In his Fedele Testimonianza, Francescon remembered that it was 'between 15 September and the end of December 1907' that 'the Lord performed many miraculous healings [on] illnesses which were chronic and incurable for human science'. Among those healed he remembered Lombardi, Pietro De Stefano, Lucia Menna, and Fidalma Andreoni. 

Lombardi entered into Spirit Baptism at the same time, and within a few weeks was seeking out ministry opportunities. At first he replaced Lencioni in the Chicago Church, when the latter was called to Hulberton, NY, to consolidate the work there. Soon Lombardi was also working more broadly in evangelism among Italian migrants. The short, thickset Lombardi had a simple and direct faith, out of which he was prepared to speak directly about his experience of God. Often abrupt and to the point, his character seemed to soften only in the presence of children "with whom he was often joking." (p. 121)  Despite both having large families, in the early part of 1908, both he and Francescon felt called to give up their secular work and to live by faith, so as to extend the work of the Spirit. When this word was confirmed by prophecy,  they took the step to "arrenderci interamente alla volontà del nostro Signore". In April, four of those in the Assemblea Cristiana left to return to Italy, to carry the word to their families. Three returned without much success, while Demetrio Cristiani remained with his family and saw some fruit for his efforts. Francescon 'ordained' Pietro Menconi and A. Andreoni as elders of the Assemblea, and went to assist the work started by Pietro Ottolini and Giovanni Perrou in St Louis, MO, where Lombardi joined him. They then travelled to California together in the early part of September. During this trip, however, Lombardi clearly heard the call to Italy. In 1908 he left his few savings with the leaders of the Church, asked them to watch over his family, and set off to take a ship for Rome. Michele Palma remembered the event as follows:

“Brother Giacomo Lombardi had six children. He came to church one Sunday with a handkerchief in his hand, goes in front of the main brothers and said: "The Lord sends me to Italy, I have five hundred dollars saved [Francescon would report it as $50], I give them to you, take care of my wife and my six children" . The next day he went to the train, without money, he walked up and down and said: "Lord, if you send me to Italy you must obtain for me the passage". A gentleman came to him with an envelope and said: "Are you Mr Lombardi?" "Yes," and there was enough money to get to New York. He arrived where the ship was, but he could not enter because he did not have a ticket and the same thing happened: someone gave him an envelope with money to take it to Naples and then to Rome. You can see how the Lord sent him and truly recommended him." [Remoli]

While he travelled, Francescon continued to work in California, and it would be out of this work that Serafino Arena returned to work in Sicily (particularly around Messina and Catania) while Lombardi was working in the north. Others (such as Pietro Ottolin and Lucia Menna) followed them, each returning first to the existing networks in families and towns, where they could gain a hearing, and then building on the missionized networks established by other returnees. 

For Lombardi, the founding link was a childhood friend living in Rome (Ignazio Rocchi then a porter near the Scalo di San Lorenzo), as Bracco notes, a seemingly 'distant and weak' link on which to rely.  Lombardi circulated among the Protestant churches, only to find himself largely rebuffed. When he attempted to contact members of various congregations, he found himself 'violently rejected'.  Bracco records the oral tradition that the pastor who so violently rejected Lombardi died suddenly only a week later. Shortly thereafter, Lombardi was walking along the via del Corso towards the Piazza del Popolo, when he felt instructed to 'speak to the man walking in front' of him in the Lord's name. Instead of the rejection he had experienced, this man (Sgr. Sforza) opened up his arms, and warmly greeted Lombardi with the expression 'I will never reject someone who comes to me in the name of the Lord'. He was Lombardi's first convert to pentecostal spirituality, followed by the torinese lawyer, Mauro Paretti and his wife Angela Gariglio, who in turn connected him to Michele Di Napoli, a spiritually-dissatisfied deacon in a Protestant church, and his wife Rosa. It was in this extended family circle that the Pentecostal testimony began to grow, meeting for about two years for worship in the Roman friend’s private house, before transfering to Paretti's legal offices at 7 della Salita del Grillo.  

It did not take long for these Christian Evangelical Pentecostals to become a community.  Lombardi also formed a community in La Spezia, where Umberto Gazzeri from the Chicago church had laid the basis by evangelizing his family, and another in Abruzzo. In 1909,  Lombardi returned to the United States (via Havana, arriving in Tampa, Florida, on the SS Olivette on July 24)-- and thence travelled with Francescon and Lucia Menna in South America. Arriving in Buenos Aires, they 'encountered fierce opposition (arrest and imprisonment) on account of their preaching, yet their toil was not in vain. The Argentine work matured into a thriving denomination'. (P. Palma 2019) Among those converted were Menna's family, including Michelangelo Menna and his family in the countryside, and then on 8 March 1910, left for São Paulo, Brazil. There (amidst reports of remarkable divine guidance and effective preaching) they encountered and converted Vincenzo Pievani, who lived at Sant'Antonio della Platina in Paranà. On April 18 Francescon left for the Brazilian hinterland in Paranà, while Lombardi returned to Buenos Aires.

Even while he was away from Italy the relationship networks continued to expand the numbers of people who heard of the Pentecostal way, networks into which the Chicago elders (Ottolini, Menna and for a brief time, Francescon himself) would work largely in the north of Italy. Lombardi would personally return to Italy five more times. In 1912, he built on the early work of Serafino Arena to lay the basis for the later emergence of a pentecostal church in Messina, Sicily, a city which (in 1908) had been badly damaged in an earthquake which (due to the proximity of the American fleet at the time) drew significant attention in the USA. In 1914, Lombardi returned to Italy and opened a church in Milan. In 1917, he returned despite the war, and circulated among the other communities which were in formation, including the congregations in Sicily and Matera. While passing through, he felt led to a small village, Bruzzano, in Reggio Calabria. His work there would result in a church being established there in 1919.  When Lombardi was about to return to the USA in 1920, the oral tradition is that he was commanded by God not to proceed. He disembarked, and later learned that the ship he was to travel in had hit a mine, and sunk. (Nigido 1988) He returned again in 1921, when (in addition to preaching) he visited his sister Domenica in Prezza (returned to the USA in May, 1922 on the SS Dante Alighieri;  and in 1923, as the clouds of Fascism began to gather over the country. This time he remained to build on the earlier work of Arena, and various elders, in the church of Messina; on a visit to Rome, he also apppointed Ettore Strappaveccia the overseer of the church which had emerged from his earliest work in Italy. As he returned to the USA for the last time, he appointed continuing leadership in a way which remained in the memory of local pentecostals for decades. Despite never having met the man, Lombardi stopped during a meeting and, asked if there was someone named Carmelo Crisafulli with them. A young man, recently converted to the Gospel, very timidly replied: "It is I"; "Well," said Lombardi, "come forward because the Lord calls you to be the elder of this Church". Crisafulli would lead the church for decades, and people from Messina would spread around the world with Lombardi's 'stamp' on their spirituality. (Hutchinson) He returned to the USA in September 1924, on the SS Giuseppe Verdi. 

Given the oral nature of much memory, and the fact that Lombardi did not leave extensive records, it is difficult to verify if the stories reported of his ministry by others were unalloyed with later insertions. His ability to hear the voice of God, his prophetic ability (one story recalls that he predicted to Ignazio Rocchi that there would be a huge earthquake in Messina, a month before it happened), and the tales of healings and remarkable coincidences, are not atypical of 'apostolic beginnings' in primitivist movements. There can be little doubt, however, that Lombardi left a significant legacy in Italy, howevermuch the historian's account is bound to be more nuanced than the 'foundation' stories recalled by his successors.  

Not much is known about Lombardi's last decade, after returning from Italy having put in place elders for the local churches. He does not, as Paul Palma notes, appear in the early proceedings of the CCNA, despite the fact that he no doubt was working among various connected churches. He died on 27 Jul 1934. Nunzia moved in with Elvera and Santo. She died in 1955.


Children

Adolfo  (1889–07/04/1948?); 

Silveria 'Sylvia' (1891– ; m. Nicola D'Amato, b. 1887, Teora, Avellino, Campania; arr. 1906, Chicago - d. Chicago); 

Elvera  (1898– 1996, Chicago; m. Santo Domine/ Domini, b. 1897, Villapriolo, Enna, Sicily; arr. 29/03/1912; d. 1981, Chicago)

Antonio Giacomo 'Tony' (18 May 1900– ), m. Bessie F. (b. 1900, Ohio); motor mechanic; in 1942 living in Ocean City, Maryland, and working in Washington with the Motor Transport Division of the War Department; 

Giovanni 'John' A. (1901– 1995, Chicago); 

Frederick (1904–); 

Alfredo James  (1904–1981, Florida); 

Enrico 'Henry' James (1905–1946); m. Helen Angela Szymczyk Shimsheck (1909–1957) 

William (1907–1911)


Sources

Ancestry

Hutchinson, Mark, Pellegrini: An Italian Protestant Church in Sydney, 1958-1998, Sydney: APSS, 1998.

Nicandrio, Patrizia, 'Origini delle storie del movimento pentecostale italiano: Le Assemblee di Dio in Italia', PhD thesis, Universita' degli studi di Bergamo, 2014. 

Nigido, Teresa, Interview, Roma 1951, reported in Cristiani Oggi  VII.24 (1988), pp. 2-3.

Palma, Paul, Italian American Pentecostalism and the Struggle for Religious Identity 

Remoli, Leah Palma, Interview, Australasian Pentecostal Studies Centre Archives, Alphacrucis College