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ENDNOTES
1 Emelio Betances, The Catholic Church and Power Politics in Latin
America: The Dominican Case in Comparative Perspective (Lanham,
MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2007), 17. According to Betances, the
Church in Latin America struggled in the post-independence pe-
riod to regain the status it held during the colonial period.
2 Howard J. Wiarda, “The Changing Political Orientation of the
Catholic Church in the Dominican Republic,” Journal of Church
and State, vol. 7, no. 2 (Spring 1965): 238-254, here 239.
3 Ricardo Pittini, Memorias Salesianas de un Arzobispo Ciego (Bue-
nos Aires: Editorial Poblet, 1949), 11. In 1952, the book was trans-
lated and published as Memories in My Blindness. The archbishop
was essentially blind by 1945.
4 The Salesians of St. John Bosco, formerly known as the Society
of Saint Francis de Sales, is a religious congregation of men in the
Catholic Church, founded in the late 19th century by Don Bosco to
help poor children during the Industrial Revolution; it was initially
named after St. Francis de Sales, a 17th century bishop of Geneva.
5 Philip Pascucci, “Out of Our Past: An American Venture
into Seminary Training,” Journal of Salesian Studies, vol. 7, no. 1
(Spring 1996): 135-170, here 165.
6 Ibid., 160.
7 Due to declining enrollment, the Roman Catholic seminary
closed in 1991. Today, the impressive building built with the
funds collected by Pittini serves as the main campus of the Sussex
County Community College.
8 Zenon Castillo de Aza, Trujillo y otros Benefactores de la Iglesia
(Santo Domingo: Editora Handicap, 1961), 216. In 1955, Castillo
de Aza, a Catholic priest, was the first to officially propose grant-
ing Trujillo the title “Benefactor of the Church.”
9 Mats Lundahl and Jan Lundius, Peasants and Religion: A Socio-
economic Study of Dios Olivorio and the Palma Sola Religion in the Do-
minican Republic (New York: Routledge, 1999), 581. The category
four hurricane was the fifth deadliest recorded Atlantic hurricane
in history, killing more than 8,000 people on the island.
10 William Louis Wipfler, The Churches of the Dominican Republic
in the Light of History (Cuernavaca, Mexico: Centro Intercultural
de Documentacion, 1967), 205. An Episcopal priest, Wipfler was
the Director of the Caribbean and Latin American Department
of the National Council of Churches from 1968 to 1977. Accord-
ing to Wipfler, the Catholic Church “entered the era of Trujillo
(1930-1961) as a legal nonentity threatened with the confiscation
of its already meager possessions.” Fietta laid the groundwork for
friendly relations between the Church and the dictatorship.
11 Julio Rodríguez Grullón, Trujillo y la Iglesia (Santo Domingo: Sec-
retaría de Estado de Educación, Bellas Artes y Cultos, 1991), 120.
12 José Luis Sáez, Monseñor Pittini (Santo Domingo: Amigo del
Hogar, 2002), 33. According to ecclesiastical historian José Luis
Sáez, Pittini’s willingness to work with Trujillo’s regime is exempli-
fied by his trip to Haiti in February 1938, when he delivered a check
for $250,000 to compensate Haiti for the 15,000 Haitians killed in
the Dominican Republic in 1937 during the Parsley Massacre. For
an excellent historical account of the event, see Eric Paul Roorda,
“Genocide Next Door: The Good Neighbor Policy, the Trujillo
Regime, and the Haitian Massacre of 1937,” Diplomatic History, vol.
20, no. 3 (July 1996): 301–319. For a powerful literary account of
the event, see Edwidge Danticat’s The Farming of Bones (1998).
13 Frank Moya Pons, “Notas para una Historia de la Iglesia en
Santo Domingo,” Eme-Eme 1, no. 6 (1973): 3-17, here 15.
14 Betances, The Catholic Church and Power Politics in Latin Amer-
ica, 33. The four new dioceses (with their newly appointed bish-
ops) were: Santiago de los Caballeros in 1953 (Hugo Polanco Bri-
to), La Vega in 1953 (Francisco Panal), San Juan de la Maguana
in 1953 (Thomas Reilly), and Nuestra Señora de la Altagracia in
Higüey in 1959 (Juan Felix Pepén).
15 Officially Santo Domingo de Guzmán, the city was estab-
lished by the Spaniards in 1496 on the east bank of the Ozama
River, but it was moved to the west bank a few years later. From
1936 to 1961, the city was called Ciudad Trujillo in honor of the
dictator, which is yet another example of Trujillo’s megalomania.
The lighthouse was constructed east of the Ozama River. Santo
Domingo is the oldest continuously occupied European settle-
ment in the Americas.
16 “Columbus Memorial Lighthouse,” Bulletin of the Pan Ameri-
can Union, vol. 82 (January 1948): 341-43, here 343.
17 “The Chargé in the Dominican Republic (Scherer) to the
Secretary of State” (April 30, 1946), Foreign Relations of the Unit-
ed States, 1946: The American Republics, vol. 11, accessed Septem-
ber 1, 2020,
frus1946v11/d699.
18 For the complete text of the Concordat, signed on June 16,
1954 in Rome, see:
retariat_state/archivio/documents/rc_seg-st_19540616_concor-
dato-dominicana_sp.html, accessed September 1, 2020.
19 Wiarda, “The Changing Political Orientation of the Catholic
Church in the Dominican Republic,” 240.
20 Zanini was born on May 6, 1909 in Riese, a small Italian town
that was the birthplace of Pope Pius X (r. 1903-1914). To honor the
pope, the town was officially renamed Riese Pio X, although most
inhabitants simply say Riese. On July 2, 1933, Zanini was ordained
a priest in Venice. He joined the Vatican’s diplomatic corps in 1938.
See Benjamín Rodríguez Carpio, Lino Zanini, el Nuncio que Desafió a
Trujillo (Santo Domingo: Argos, 2019). Rodríguez Carpio astutely
points out that Zanini avoided using the term “Ciudad Trujillo” in
public, much to the chagrin of Trujillo. Zanini retired in 1989 and
died on October 25, 1997 in Rome.
21 Betances, The Catholic Church and Power Politics in Latin America, 36.
22 Jonathan Hartlyn, “The Trujillo regime in the Dominican
Republic,” in Sultanistic Regimes, ed. H. E. Chehabi and Juan J.
Linz (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1998): 85-112,
here 100. Leading the six signers of the pastoral letter was Pittini.
The other five bishops who signed were Octavio Beras (who had
served as coadjutor archbishop since 1945), Hugo Polanco Brito
(Santiago de los Caballeros), Francisco Panal (La Vega), Thomas
Reilly (San Juan de la Maguana), and Juan Felix Pepén (Nuestra
Señora de la Altagracia in Higüey).
23 Wiarda, “The Changing Political Orientation of the Catholic
Church in the Dominican Republic,” 241-42.
24 “Dominican Republic Bishops Give Human Rights Pastoral,”
The Catholic Advocate, vol. 9, no. 7 (February 1960): 16.
25 Betances, The Catholic Church and Power Politics in Latin Ameri-
ca, 36.
26 Bernardo Vega, Los Estados Unidos y Trujillo: Los Días Finales,
1960-61: Colección de Documentos del Departamento de Estado, la CIA
y los Archivos del Palacio Nacional Dominicano (Santo Domingo:
Fundación Cultural Dominicana, 1999), 71-73.
27 Michael R. Hall, Sugar and Power in the Dominican Republic: Ei-
senhower, Kennedy, and the Trujillos (Westport, CT: Greenwood
Press, 2000), 93.
28 Robert D. Crassweller, Trujillo: The Life and Times of a Caribbe-
an Dictator (New York: Macmillan Company, 1966), 385-86.
29 Betances, The Catholic Church and Power Politics in Latin Ameri-
ca, 39.
RICARDO PITTINI: ROMAN CATHOLIC ARCHBISHOP OF SANTO DOMINGO