[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 155 (2009), Part 17]
[Senate]
[Page 22804]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                  TRIBUTE TO FATHER ROBERTO BALDUCELLI

 Mr. KAUFMAN. Mr. President, today I recognize the 
extraordinary contributions of a patriarch of the Italian-American 
community in my home State of Delaware, Father Roberto Balducelli. On 
Columbus Day, Father Balducelli will be honored by the Columbus 
Communion Breakfast Committee with its Outstanding Achievement Award.
  Father Balducelli's 96 years on this Earth, while a true gift to all 
he has served, reads like a novel. As a 9-year-old boy in the small 
town of Castelluccio, Italy, he decided that he wanted to pursue an 
ecclesiastical education in Rome. In 1929, at the age of 16, he joined 
the Oblates of St. Francis de Sales. After studying in France and 
Switzerland, he returned to Italy from September 1939 to March 1946.
  During World War II, Father Balducelli helped save Italian Jews from 
persecution. The young priest recovered the bodies of civilians killed 
in bombing raids, was injured in one of these attacks, and sheltered 
refugees from Nazi persecution.
  After receiving a passport to come to the United States, Father 
Balducelli crossed the Atlantic Ocean over the course of 29 days and 
arrived in New York on April 10, 1946. The young oblate arrived at St. 
Anthony's of Padua Church in Wilmington soon after and became the 
church's first Italian priest. In 1959, he became pastor of St. 
Anthony's.
  As a first-rate mason and a licensed contractor in the State of 
Delaware, Father Balducelli oversaw and helped undertake the renovation 
of an old public school to meet young Catholic students' educational 
needs, and he helped establish a new school, called Padua Academy, for 
girls, as well.
  His love of welding helped to build St. Anthony in the Hills in the 
1960s, a popular summer retreat and sanctuary for children and their 
families near Hockessin, DE. On his watch, the parish opened a senior 
and day care center and expanded the regionally prominent Italian 
Festival in Delaware. He retired as the church's pastor in 1988.
  I am privileged to have known Father Balducelli for many years. I 
look forward to breaking bread with him at the Columbus Communion 
Breakfast in Wilmington's Little Italy on the day of his special 
recognition.
  I hope my colleagues will join me in celebrating Father Balducelli's 
significant accomplishments, which he achieved over the course of a 
lifetime dedicated to our community. Wilmington and our Italian-
American community could not have woven such a fabric of family and 
strength if it were not for the commitment and foresight of Father 
Roberto Balducelli.

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