Saint Benedict's church on BARBARA STREET

Barbara St. corner with Niagara St. 

Saint Benedict Church on Barbara St. corner with Niagara St.

Sometimes it's hard to understand the things I do or the things I don't do. You see, when I arrived in the USA on 2nd October 1971, and went to live on Barbara Street corner with Wilson Avenue, in the Ironbound, a section of Newark just south of Pennsylvania Station, I was really eager to know every crack in those dirty sidewalks of Broadway & Manhattan, just like Glen Campbell sings in 'Rhinestone cowboy', that 1976 hit of his. 

By November 1971, I started working at a vynil record factory on Francis Street, just 5 blocks away from home. I would leave home at 11:30 pm, walk Barbara St. down, cross Niagara St., I would turn left on Niagara, walk one block and turn right at Komorn St.; kept walking south, cross Magazine St. up to Francis St. where the factory was located between Komorn St. and Kossuth St. 

You see, I must have walked past Saint Benedict Church, on the corner of Barbara & Niagara streets hundreds of times and never had the least curiosity to go in and see how the church was inside. Especially when Saint Benedict was supposed to be my Patron Saint for I was baptized in a Saint Benedict church in Marília-SP in 1949, and made my First Communion there in 1958.

The fact is a misconception of the name of Saint Benedict which in Portuguese is translated in 2 different ways: as São Bento and as São Benedito, a literal translation from Latin. To make things more complicated, we have 2 different saints bearing these names: São Bento is the pioneer of Catholicism in the Middle Ages and São Benedito is a Black priest who became a saint much later. 

São Bento (480-547) & São Benedito (1526-1589). 

Benedict of Nursia OSB (Italian: Benedetto da Norcia; 2nd March 480 – 21 March 547), known as Saint Benedict, was an Italian Christian monk, writer, and theologian. Benedict founded 12 communities for monks at Subiaco in present-day Lazio, Italy, before moving further south-east to Monte Cassino in the mountains of central Italy. 

Benedict the Moor OFM (Italian: Benedetto il Moro; 1526 – 4 April 1589) was a Sicilian Franciscan friar. Born of enslaved Africans in San Fratello, he was freed at birth and became known for his charity. As a young man he joined a Franciscan-affiliated hermit group, of which he became the leader. In 1564 he was sent to the Franciscan friary in Palermo, where he continued good works. He died in 1589 and was canonized as a Catholic saint by Pope Pius VII in 1807.