Almost four years ago, I co-authored the book Giuseppe Maria Abbate: The Italian-American Celestial Messenger with James W. Craig. At that time, we believed that essentially all archival material related to Abbate and his New Jerusalem Catholic Church of the Celestial Messenger had been destroyed in the early 1990s.

However, a sizable collection, once part of the church archive, has recently appeared. It includes publications, documents, photos, and objects. Not even the official publications, such as the L’Araldo magazine, are found in any research library I know. Thus, the collection contains unique materials and will serve as a basis for further studies on Abbate and his church. Currently, the archive is stored with me, and I’m preparing an article about the foundation and early development of the church. Hopefully, other studies will follow. In the near future, I will publish a selection of reproductions of photos and pictures of objects from the collection on this website. Below, you will find a few images of the collection before I started organizing it.

Continue reading “A Newly Discovered Collection of Documents from the New Jerusalem Catholic Church of the Celestial Messenger” →