When Bombings Menaced A North Beach Church

Hundreds of neighbors in their nightclothes rushed to the scene, along with every available police officer. A police officer was stationed at the church, but was taken by surprise and was unable to catch the bombers as they drove away. The mysterious bombers had terrorized the church, and the police seemed helpless to stop them. Nationalists disliked the church because it had opposed Italian reunification, while radicals and anarchists saw organized religion as an opiate of the masses. A number of North Beach Italians were sovversivi, or subversives, who subscribed to radical publications like L’Asino (the Donkey), an anticlerical satirical review founded in Rome that had a circulation in Italy of more than 100,000. The Idealism of the Sovversivi in the United States, 1890-1940, one issue of L’Asino featured an open letter addressed to “Dear Madonna del Carmine, c/o Eternal Father — Heaven,” questioning her miraculous powers and asking sarcastically if she was the best and most powerful of all Madonnas. After the fourth bombing, San Francisco police, led by Detective Louis De Matei — a cousin of a priest at the church — devised a plan to catch the culprits. Thirteen undercover police officers were stationed inside and outside the church from 11 p.m.