Danilo Gallinari – basketball player

Giant from Lodi province who plays in America’s NBA

Danilo Gallinari joined New York Knicks
in 2008 after entering the draft

Danilo Gallinari, the only Italian-born player currently active in America’s National Basketball Association, was born on this day in 1988 in Sant’Angelo Lodigiani in Lombardy.  

Only nine Italian-born players have participated in the NBA – America’s premier basketball league – since its formation in 1946.  

Gallinari, who stands 6ft 10ins tall, has played for six NBA teams, the latest of which is Boston Celtics.

Previously he had played for New York Knicks,  under the coaching of Mike D’Antoni, is an American-born former player who is now an Italian citizen, the Denver Nuggets, Los Angeles Clippers, Oklahoma City Thunder and Atlanta Hawks.  

Gallinari, whose father, Vittorio, played professional basketball for teams in Milan, Pavia, Bologna and Verona, began his career in 2004 with Casalpusterlengo, a third-level Italian team from a town about 25km (15 miles) from his home in Sant’Angelo Lodigiano.  

He moved up a tier in 2005 by joining Armani Jeans Milano and then Edimes Pavia, where in 2006 he was named best Italian player in the Italian League Second Division, despite missing half the season through injury.  Read more…

Danilo Gallinari, representing the
Italian national team in 2010

This earned him a move to his father’s old club, Olimpia Milano, in which he was named as the First Division’s best player under the age of 22 in his first season and topped the league’s overall efficiency ratings in 2007-08.

Gallinari also represented Olimpia Milano in the elite EuroLeague – basketball’s equivalent of the Champions League in football – scoring 27 points in his final game of the 2007-08 campaign against Maccabi Tel Aviv.

His move to the NBA came in 2008, when he took advantage of an escape clause in his Olimpia Milano contract that permitted him to take up any opportunity to play professionally in the United States and entered himself for the NBA draft.

New York Knicks acquired him as the sixth draft pick and gave him a two-year contract.

Gallinari’s time in the NBA has been bedevilled by injuries yet his performances have improved year on year.

He missed a large part of his debut 2008-09 season with back problems and, after sustaining an anterior ligament injury that ended his 2012-13 season at Denver early, he had to sit out the entire 2013-14 season as he underwent rehabilitation.

Gallinari, who plays as a small forward/power forward, was also sidelined for the final 22 games of the 2015-16 season with Denver because of an ankle injury.

He was the biggest acquisition of the summer for Los Angeles Clippers when he joined them in 2017.

Gallinari’s statistics, however, demonstrate how he has become an increasingly valuable player when fit.  In 2009, he set a career-high points haul of 30 for New York against Philadelphia 76ers; his current career-high stands at 47, which he recorded in a double-overtime loss to Dallas Mavericks for Denver Nuggets in 2015.

UPDATED: August 2022.

A sunlit Piazza della Vittoria

Travel tip:

Both Sant’Angelo Lodigiano and Casalpusterlengo are municipalities in the province of Lodi, an historic small city on the banks of the River Adda that was the property of the Visconti family and the Sforzas in the 15^th and 16^th centuries, when it had great value as the central town of a richly fertile agricultural area, which it is to this day.  Its prosperity was the consequence of a system of artificial rivers and channels, work on which began in the 13^th century, that was created to irrigate what had previously been arid and unusable land. The heart of the city is the beautiful Piazza della Vittoria.

The Mediolanum Forum, home of Olimpio Milano

Travel tip:

The Olimpio Milano team, sometimes known as Emporio Armani Milano, play their home matches at the Mediolanum Forum, an indoor sports and concert arena with seats for 12,700 spectators, situated in the Assago suburb of Milan and now accessible by a direct Metro service from the centre of the city.  Assago is also home to the Italian headquarters of Nestlé.

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Frances Xavier Cabrini – the first American saint

Missionary who was directed to the US by the Pope

Saint Frances was encouraged by the Pope to go
to the United States to help Italian immigrants

Saint Frances Xavier Cabrini, who founded a religious institute to provide support for impoverished Italian immigrants in the United States, was born on this day in 1850 in Sant’Angelo Lodigiano, in Lombardy.

Frances did such good in her life that she become the first naturalised citizen of the United States to be canonised in 1946.

She had been born into a family of cherry tree farmers, the youngest of 13 children. She was two months premature and remained in delicate health all her life.

After her parents died she applied for admission to the Daughters of the Sacred Heart but was told she was too frail for the life.

She became the headmistress of an orphanage in Codogno, about 30km (19 miles) from her home town, where she drew in other women to live a religious life with her.

She took religious vows in 1877, adding Xavier to her name to honour Francis Xavier, the patron saint of missionary service.

Along with some of the other women who had taken religious vows, she founded the Missionary Sisters of the Sacred Heart of Jesus.

Frances went to seek Pope Leo X’s approval to establish missions in China but he suggested she went to the United States instead, to help the many Italian immigrants who were living in poverty.

The Missionary Sisters of the Sacred Heart of Jesus began
to organise themselves soon after Frances arrived in New York

She arrived in New York in 1889 along with six other sisters and despite encountering difficulties she founded an orphanage there, which is now known as Saint Cabrini Home.

She also founded Columbus Hospital and Italian Hospital, which were merged into the Cabrini Medical Center in the 1980s.

In Chicago, she opened Columbus Extension Hospital in the heart of the city’s Italian community. Her name lives on today in Chicago’s Cabrini Street.

In total she founded 67 institutions in the United States, South America and Europe and became a naturalised US citizen in 1909.

Frances died at the age of 67 at Columbus Hospital in Chicago in 1917 and was interred at Saint Cabrini Home in New York.

But her body was exhumed in 1931 as part of the canonisation process. Her head is now preserved in the chapel of the congregation’s international motherhouse in Rome.

An arm is at a shrine in Chicago and most of her body is at a shrine in New York.

Frances was beatified in 1938 by Pope Pius XI and canonised in 1946 by Pope Pius XII.

Her beatification miracle involved restoring the sight and healing the disfigurements of a one-day-old baby. The same baby attended her canonisation ceremony years later and went on to become a priest.

Her canonisation miracle involved the healing of a terminally ill member of her congregation.

Saint Frances Xavier Cabrini is now the patron saint of immigrants and there are shrines, churches and educational establishments dedicated to Saint Frances all over the United States.

The Piazza della Vittoria in Lodi

Travel tip:

Sant’Angelo Lodigiano, where Saint Frances was born, is a town in Lombardy in the province of Lodi. It is about 30 kilometres south east of Milan and about 12 kilometres south west of Lodi. Piazza della Vittoria, the main square in Lodi, features porticoes on all four sides and has been listed by the Italian Touring Club among the most beautiful squares in Italy.

Milan's Stazione Centrale was given the name Stazione
Francesca Cabrini in 2010

Travel tip:

Milan’s Central Station was renamed Stazione Francesca Cabrini in 2010 in memory of the patron saint of immigrants. The Vatican newspaper, L’Osservatore Romano, explained at the time that ‘stations where people pass through who are far from home, often alone and therefore extremely fragile and exposed to dangers, are difficult places, and above all, are points of arrival and departure for migratory groups.’ Milano Centrale is one of the main railway stations in Europe. Its cornerstone was laid by King Victor Emmanuel III in Piazza Duca d’Aosta in 1906. The architect, Ulisse Stacchini, won the contest to design the station in 1912.

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