"IT’S A SMALL WORLD AFTER ALL”
An Interview with Father Thomas Pingatore

By Caroline Snyder

Reverend Thomas Pingatore and I discovered this as we sat together in the rectory office at St. John’s Catholic Church in Dayton’s Bluff.   Reminiscing about North Minneapolis where he was born and raised and Robbinsdale where I was born and raised, we discovered that we were neighbors back in the 1940s and 50s.  Living on the borderline between the two communities, we are today, 55 years later, just getting to know each other.
With a sparkle in his eyes and a youthfulness in his demeanor, he told me how his father Frank came to this country at the age of 15 from the Calabria region in Italy.   He sent for his sweetheart in Italy when he was 21.  The couple was married at St. Joseph’s Church   and a new life began for the Pingatore’s on the North Side of Minneapolis. His father originally owned a grocery store in the Plymouth and Washington Avenue area.  Later he sold the store and went to work for the city maintenance department. He and his wife raised five sons. They worked and sacrificed so that each son could attend Catholic schools and in Father Pingatore’s case enter into the priesthood. 

Father Pingatore attended Ascension school and began preparing for the priesthood in the elementary grades.  When Father made his decision to enter the priesthood in the 8th grade he told a total of 5 Irish priests at Ascension “he wanted to become a priest.”  In that day and age it was common to have several priests at a parish.
Father Thomas Pingatore
 
After finishing Ascension school he went on to Nazareth Hall at Lake Johanna in Shoreview to study religion and theology.  Being in boarding school all during this period of time was normal procedure for anyone entering the St. Paul Major Seminary.  After 13 years of preparation he was ordained as a priest in October of 1944.  Today the time spent in preparation for the priesthood is about half of that.

“Little Italy” on the East Side became home in 1948 when Father Pingatore was made the first pastor of St. Ambrose Mission Church on Payne Avenue.   St. Ambrose, with a predominantly Italian congregation, became an official parish in 1954 after being a mission church for many years.   Father was its pastor until 1998 when it was closed. Some of its parishioners then chose to become members of St. John’s in the Dayton’s Bluff area.  St. John’s today has around 500 families.

In 1948 when St. Ambrose parish was in need of some athletic equipment, Father Pingatore and Nick Mancini (owner of Mancini’s Restaurant) visited every bar on West 7th Street to ask for contributions.   When Father was asked what he was doing in a bar, Father replied to them – “If I’m not allowed in here then certainly you are not!”  Needless to say, they did receive enough contributions to purchase the equipment. In keeping with his generosity and concern for others, Father Pingatore and St. Ambrose raised $80,000 for victims of the 1981 earthquake that hit Italy.  In 1983 when he revisited Naples in the hardest hit area, the ruins were still evident and people were still struggling to put their lives back together. 

Father has made eight visits to his parent’s homeland in Italy.  He traced his father’s ancestry during his first visit.  It began at the “Il Bar” in the city of Settingiano.  When entering the premises he inquired of the proprietor if he knew of any Pingatore’s in the neighborhood.  He told Father “just a minute” and in 20 minutes brought back 12 Pingatore’s and the joyful reunion began. 

In Italy you will always have “a good meal” he relates.  Your pasta is never cooked beforehand.  It is cooked while you wait.  It may take a little while longer but the wait is worth the extra time.  Father’s favorite is veal scallopini and lasagna.  Wine, of course, is very much a part of the meal.  “Always order the wine of the region you are visiting.  The people in Italy know how to savor their wine and drink in moderation.  It is a complement to the meal and is seldom overindulged.  The meal itself is a celebration of family and friends and children are allowed to partake in a ‘taste of the wine’ at a young age.” 

On June 23rd, Pope Pius IX and Pope John XXIII were beatified (prior to sainthood).  I asked Father what his opinion was of our present pope, Pope John Paul II.  He admires the Pope greatly for his commitment to the return of the ideology of Christian social life and the efforts he made personally towards the inevitable collapse of Communism. 

I couldn’t end our conversation without telling him about an anecdotal experience I had in the confessional when I was a little girl of seven who had just made her First Communion.  The first time I entered the confessional I was so sure that if I didn’t tell every venial (little) sin that I had committed in the course of my young years I was surely doomed from the gates of heaven.  After I’m sure was an eternity, trying to remember every thing I had done in my young life or anyone I may have hurt since birth, I finally struggled to compose myself to leave the confessional with all my prayers of penance swimming in my head.  I had to walk down the church aisle past the stares of others as they beheld this great sinner of seven years of age.  Normally a confession doesn’t take more than a few minutes for your average sinner. 

Father had one better – of course!  He relates his story of a priest from Assumption Church hearing confessions.  There were two lines that had formed in front of the confessionals, one for each priest.  There was an eerie silence in the church when out of one of the confessionals came a loud exclamation of  “And you did what????!”  The line in front of that confessional quickly dissipated. 

Father has come full circle, beginning his ministry as an assistant at St. John’s in 1945 and today is its full time pastor.  I have connected with a friend from the “old neighborhood.”  Our paths have crossed and I for one am grateful for this encounter.  It really is “a small world after all.”