More than a century ago, Our Lady of Mount Virgin, located in Seattle’s Mount Baker neighborhood, was once the heart of Seattle’s Italian community. In 1915, when the church was built, about 215 Italian families called the neighborhood home. As new immigrants arrived, Our Lady of Mount Virgin was one of the first places they would visit for information on jobs and housing, to make new friends and to tend to their spiritual needs.
A few years later, Seattle watched in horror as the great flu pandemic of 1918 spread through the Pacific Northwest along with the rest of the world. Although it remains to be seen whether the coronavirus will be as devastating, the so-called “Spanish flu” was the most widespread and lethal outbreak of disease in recorded history. In Washington state, the flu touched nearly every community, killing about 5,000 Washingtonians. Unlike COVID-19, more than half the victims were between the ages of 20 and 50.
Our Lady of Mount Virgin had its roots in a small German church built in the 1890s by Seattle’s German Catholic community who wanted a church where they could worship in their own language. The wooden church was named for St. Boniface, the patron saint of Germany. But by 1910, the neighborhood was changing as more Italians moved into the area. This new group of immigrants wanted a church that reflected their own heritage and language.
Edward O’Dea, bishop of Seattle from 1896 until his death in 1932, called on the Jesuit community to minister to the Italian immigrants, and a priest called Father De Rop took on the task. On September 10, 1911, Fr. De Rop celebrated the first mass in Italian at St. Boniface. A few weeks later, he changed its name to Our Lady of Mount Virgin in tribute to the famous Benedictine monastery of Montevergine in southern Italy.
By 1913, De Rop’s health was failing, and Fr. Ludovico Caramello, a charismatic and energetic Jesuit priest, stepped in. Caramello was from a well-to-do family in Turin, Italy, and had served at a parish in Montreal becoming moving to Seattle.
He took up residency in St. Boniface’s rectory while making plans to build a larger and grander church in the Florentine style. He also wanted a school built on the site. When his first collection plate took in just 35 cents, Caramello simply laughed and went ahead with his work, “smiling and full of hope,” according to an article in The Seattle Times.
Thanks to this hopeful attitude and Caramello’s many contacts back in Italy, his dream of a new church was realized when the new Our Lady of Mount Virgin opened its doors in 1915. The church was built in a Renaissance Revival style on a steep hill, overlooking lush gardens. Tall arched stained-glass windows let in daylight and a bell tower graced the front façade.
The smaller Church of St. Boniface was decommissioned and served for a while as a parish hall. It later became a gym, kindergarten and workshop before it was torn down around 1970.
In 1918, a parochial school opened with an enrollment of 162 students and remained in operation for more than 60 years. The Dominican sisters of Tacoma, long recognized for their dedication to quality education, took charge of the school, led by Reverend Mother Thomasina.
For the newly arrived Italians, education was seen as the ticket to a better life. “The immigrant parents were poor and had to take what jobs they could get because of the language barrier,” said Sister Manette in an interview with The Seattle Times in the 1970s. “They saw education as a doorway for their children and would sacrifice anything to get it for them.” Fr. Caramello was determined to preserve the children’s connection to their heritage, and visited the school every week to provide instruction in Italian.
Fr. Caramello was 44 years old when he arrived in Seattle, and he remained pastor of Our Lady of Mount Virgin until he died in 1949 at the age of 79. He was devoted to his students and his parishioners and worked hard to merge the Italians who arrived from diverse regions of Italy into one unified community.
Although Mount Virgin has changed little over the decades, the neighborhood has undergone significant transformation. In 1940 and again in the 1990s, parish families were displaced by the construction of, and later the expansion of, the Mount Baker tunnel, the last leg of I-90, which lies adjacent to the church.
The parish school closed in 1978 and the church survived a few earthquakes. By the 1980s, many Italian-Americans had left the old neighborhood and moved elsewhere in town or to the suburbs. Church attendance at Mount Virgin dropped dramatically. The original families who drove to church for mass each week started to worry that the historic parish would close.
But new immigrant groups arrived, breathing new life into the neighborhood. First, came Lao, Hmong and Khmu refugees, fleeing persecution in Southeast Asia. Those groups were followed by others from Vietnam, Hong Kong, Taiwan and China. Seattle’s Native American community found a home there, as well. Most masses today are celebrated in multiple languages, including Vietnamese, Lao and Chinese.
Although all public masses are currently canceled at Mount Virgin Church due to the COVID-19 outbreak, the church’s 105-year history of providing support and comfort during times of crisis continues to offer the community a beacon of hope.
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