In 1810—following five futile years trying to secure passage to China—Giovanni Grassi received new orders from the Jesuits’ superior general in Russia and traveled instead to the United States. The thirty-five-year-old Italian priest quickly became enamored with his unexpected destination and the possibilities it offered for the Catholic Church and the Society of Jesus, the latter formally restored during his brief time abroad.

Grassi spent seven years stationed at Georgetown College, dedicating the last five years to serving as its president and as the superior of the Jesuits’ Maryland mission. Though he had arrived a “sorrowful spectator to the miserable state of this college” (xix), the new president transformed the institution: lowering boarding fees, increasing enrollment, securing a charter, and awarding its first degrees. Grassi aided that work, as superior, by closing the Jesuits’ small but promising school in Manhattan, a difficult and unpopular decision made to consolidate his overextended clergy. His deliberate, assiduous labors continued until 1817, when he made another unanticipated transatlantic journey to represent the local archbishop’s interests in Rome. Poor health, though, prevented a return to his would-be adopted country.

In Italy, Grassi shared his observations of the United States among his friends who encouraged him to publish, he later explained, those “experiences that an Italian would find noteworthy” (1). The result was his Notizie varie sullo stato presente della repubblica degli Stati Uniti dell’America Settentrionale, appearing first in 1818 and in its final form in 1822. A complete English translation of the brief text waited a century, until Roberto Severino’s welcomed and eminently readable effort in Georgetown’s Second Founder. Robert Emmett Curran’s foreword helpfully recounts Grassi’s achievements at Georgetown and astutely characterizes the Jesuit’s Notizie as less Tocqueville’s Democracy in America than Jefferson’s Notes on Virginia. Friendly encouragement, though, partially explains Grassi’s motivation to publish. He felt too many of his Italian colleagues believed too many falsehoods about the United States, and Grassi sought to provide “an accurate idea of how powerful and vast that empire rising across the Atlantic actually is”(1). Indeed, the Notizie reveals much of the prevailing presumptions of its intended audience at the time.

In three chapters, Grassi summarized the republic’s general condition and its “various sects” (i.e., seven strains of Protestantism) before closing with his estimation on the state of Catholicism. The great variety in climate, soil, agriculture, and manufacturing astounded Grassi, though the “unrestrained liberty” in behavior, leading to drunkenness, duels, gambling, and “the inconsistency of goodness in the young,” was concerning (16, 19). He criticized slavery—“an open contradiction of one the first articles of the general Constitution” (10)—and yet seemed reconciled to its presence. The “true piety” and devotion of enslaved Catholics provided a missionary with “very great consolation,” Grassi argued, but also made them “preferred to all others because they are more docile and obedient” (72). His condemnation of the “greedy” involved in domestic slave trades reads especially portentous since the Maryland Jesuits were still years from selling those they held in bondage (10).

In terms of religion, Grassi was convinced that Catholicism would thrive in the United States. It was already “more widespread and well regarded in American than many may suppose,” he informed his misinformed audience (59). True, anti-Catholicism was rampant, yet it was espoused out of ignorance, contended Grassi. Many had never met a Catholic priest. With an otherwise pervading indifference among the Protestant sects, Catholics had an opportunity to reform the prejudiced but only if “the genuine principles of the Church with regard to doctrine and morals are explained to them in a gentle manner, with patient and kindhearted charity” (74). The author, declaiming any insight into the future, may offer pertinent advice even a century later. Nevertheless, with such an approach and the investment of more clergy, Grassi believed Catholicism would meet the success that the United States promised for any enterprising individual. In short, the ripe “present conditions” meant the same could apply for Catholicism as Grassi observed for the country’s agricultural production: “Omnis fert omnia tellus (All lands shall bear fruits)” (4).

One gains an appreciation for Grassi throughout Severino’s translated text. Observations were sprinkled with humor. A Protestant minister confided that his only four objections to Catholicism were his “three children and a wife to support” (51, emphasis in original). Grassi valued details, whether in the number of post offices or comb manufactures. The text also indicated the sympathetic manner in which he must have acted as superior. For his Italian readers, Grassi conveyed the trials of a missionary priest, who traveled great distances between sparse parishes where he confronted “one of the greatest difficulties […] that one is left completely alone” (70).

Let us avoid the trope of book reviews and not quibble with minor errors—such as Tadeusz Brzozowski, not Antoni Lustyg, formally succeeded Gabriel Gruber as the superior general of the Society of Jesus in Russia (xvii). Instead, there is plenty to praise—such as Severino’s wise choice to translate the entirety of Grassi’s text. Until now, only the Notizie’s third section, that on Catholicism, was available in English (Woodstock Letters xi, no. 3 [1882]: 229–46; reprinted in American Catholic Historical Researchers viii, no. 3 [1891]: 98–112). Yet, with his observations of Protestant sects, English readers now have the necessary context for Grassi’s confidence in overcoming anti-Catholicism in the United States.

Severino’s other wise decision was to translate the final version of Notizie, as published in 1822, rather than the 1818 edition used in Woodstock. The two publications’ differences, though, do capture Catholicism’s national growth in just four years: the additions of new bishoprics in Charleston, South Carolina, and Richmond, Virginia; new churches in South Carolina, Georgia, and North Carolina; a new mission state in Ohio; nearly twice the Visitation nuns residing at their Georgetown community; and a new Ursuline school near Boston. Among the most telling changes was Grassi’s extended description of Baltimore’s new cathedral—unfinished in 1818 but four years later opened for use and hailed by the Jesuit (sight unseen) as “the most remarkable church in North America” (67). The detail in his revised account reveals how aware Grassi remained of developments in the country to which he still wished to return.

Readers will benefit from Severino’s light yet helpful touch with his notes, though they may prefer that his addenda appeared as footnotes. Instead, one navigates between the text and each section’s endnotes. Meanwhile, Grassi’s own addendum—a “Table of All the Most Remarkable Things to Be Found within the Geography of the United States of North America”—is oddly wedged between Serevino’s bibliography and index. The table will reward the persistent reader with what the Jesuit considered the main products of each state and territory.

The foreword and introduction prioritize Grassi’s contributions to Georgetown, which, given the publisher, is to be expected. That emphasis does minimize the larger significance of Grassi and his Notizie. Several questions emanate when considering Grassi and his observations from a wider perspective. For example, since the Jesuit was revising his text as Peter Kenney arrived in Rome from his visitation to the United States, what impact did Grassi’s observations and unabashed boosterism of Catholicism’s future of the American mission have on Kenney’s final report and its reception? Further, did Notizie and its author influence European Jesuits into the mid-1840s, helping them to recognize the United States as not simply a safe haven from surrounding political revolutions?

Indeed, readers should not be misled by this volume’s title. Grassi’s Notizie is an ideal primary source for an undergraduate course, and Georgetown’s Second Founder is a required addition to the personal bookshelves of historians of the restored Society of Jesus, of modern Catholicism, and of the Early Republic, among other specialties. Thanks to Severino and Curran, Grassi’s century-old text has received the treatment in English it has long deserved.