By Jean Kellett

Chinese immigrants to New York find they can turn to the church on Mott Street

Maryknoll Father Raymond Nobiletti, pastor at Transfiguration Church in New York City's Chinatown, is fluent in Cantonese, having served in mission in Hong Kong, where that is the local language. Cantonese has served him well in his 20 years in Chinatown, but these days the missioner is studying Mandarin to keep up with the latest wave of immigrants to his congregation.

Built in 1801, Transfiguration is the oldest Catholic church building in New York City. It originally served Irish, then Italian immigrants. Later, as these groups assimilated and moved to other neighborhoods and the suburbs, China's 1949 communist revolution sent an influx of Cantonese speakers to Chinatown, where they gradually became the dominant group in the parish. In 1945 Maryknoll Sisters who had worked in China came to Chinatown and staffed Transfiguration Elementary, a private Catholic school in a building adjacent to the Mott Street church.

Transfiguration's work with the Chinese offers a look at the unique dramas of their U.S. immigration story. Maryknoll Sister Joanna Chan, director of youth services at the church from 1970 to 1986, remembers that in the late 1960s Chinatown had been mostly male for decades. The men came to the United States to work, but due to strict U.S. immigration quotas for Asians, they left their families behind.

"Men lived and died alone," Chan says. With the Immigration Act of 1965 and its emphasis on family reunification, wives and children started arriving in Chinatown. Chan remembers one woman who had not seen her husband for 30 years, and arrived in New York with a current picture of him that he had sent her. She later confided to Chan that she had been scared to death to meet him at the airport, because she did not know who this man was anymore. "Many of these men did not know their wives or children," Chan says. "There were communication issues, family problems exploded and no social services existed there yet."

Maryknoll Sisters worked to fill that void, taking the women to appointments, translating for them, and helping them adjust to their new country. In the 1970s the Sisters founded a pre-K and kindergarten to help mothers who needed to go to work.

In the 1980s another huge wave of Chinese immigrants—this time Mandarin speakers from Fujian Province—again changed the makeup of the parish. Unlike the earlier Cantonese speakers, the Fujianese were skilled laborers with work experience in Japan. Many of them were trained to be excellent sushi chefs. Today, employment agencies in Chinatown send them to work in sushi restaurants in Pennsylvania or Connecticut for five days at a time and the other two days they return to Chinatown. It's not a life that fosters community or family roots, and the Church is a social anchor for many of these workers.

"Fujianese Catholics are very devout," Father Nobiletti says. When they first arrived, they would bow down to him on Mott Street. It embarrassed him, and he gently persuaded them to stop.

Among the things he is most proud of is how his congregation welcomed the Fujianese. "The social divide between these groups in China is strong and it's not in their culture to reach out or be inclusive of one another," he says. "But the people in my church welcomed the Fujianese, made sure the children were invited into the school, helped the parents arrange tutoring if needed—they knew what the Gospel said."

Transfiguration Elementary is another place he feels the community shines. The private Catholic school for grades one through eight—now entirely staffed by lay teachers—is a top choice not only for neighborhood parents, but also for many non-Catholics and even families outside of Chinatown because of its high academic standards and emphasis on moral development. Of last year's graduating class of 31 students, 25 were accepted into the highly competitive Stuyvesant, Brooklyn Technical and Bronx Science high schools. Father Nobiletti laments that space limitations at the school mean that many parents who want their children to attend Transfiguration Elementary are turned away. "But then again, to increase the size would change its nature and what makes it successful," he says.

Transfiguration parish has been a valuable transitional place for young Maryknoll Sisters, who trained as teachers at the school and did pastoral work at the church to prepare for the experience of foreign mission. During Father Nobiletti's tenure, it has also been a home-away-from-home for 12 Chinese priests who came to New York to study through Maryknoll's Chinese Seminary Teachers and Formators Project.

The small church sometimes finds itself drawn into big media events. When the Golden Venture, a ship laden with undocumented Fujianese immigrants, ran aground in Queens in 1993, New York City police called Father Nobiletti. "They had Cantonese and Mandarin speakers on the force, but no one who spoke that particular dialect from Fujian Province," Father Nobiletti says. He supplied interpreters from his parish and also took in two survivors who, as minors, were too young to be held at adult correctional facilities.

Much has been written about Father Nobiletti's presence at the World Trade Center on Sept. 11, 2001. As a first responder, he remembers running against the tide of people who were fleeing the disaster. He also recalls the devastation for Chinatown, which is so close to the disaster site. With major streets in the area closed for security reasons for several months, it was a grim time for the neighborhood's fragile economy. "You couldn't even walk the streets here without a passport," he says.

Today, shops and restaurants in Chinatown are bustling. Many residents are second-generation Americans and speak fluent English, but they send their children to a special class on Sundays to learn Mandarin, an important skill now that it is the official business language of a rising world power. But Father Nobiletti doesn't focus too much on his parishioners' language or nationality. "Anyone who walks through the door is served," he says.

Jean Kellett, a Maryknoll employee in our donor services unit, is also a freelance writer.