There is a marble statue of Pope John Paul II in New Orleans. Carved from Carrara marble by artist Franco Alessandrini, it was blessed by Pope Francis himself at the Vatican in November 2017 before making its way across the Atlantic to its permanent home near St. Louis Cathedral in January 2018. The organization that commissioned it, a nonprofit dedicated to preserving the Italian Catholic story in Louisiana, had been doing this kind of work for over three decades. Its name is the American Italian Cultural Center, and its story begins with a man named Joseph Maselli who believed that being American and being Italian were not competing identities but complementary ones.
Meet the American Italian Cultural Center
The American Italian Cultural Center (AICC) sits at 537 South Peters Street in New Orleans, adjacent to the iconic Piazza d'Italia. Founded in 1985 by Joseph Maselli through the American-Italian Renaissance Foundation, the center operates as a nonprofit institution whose mission is straightforward: to honor and celebrate American Italian history and culture, past, present, and future.
Maselli deliberately chose the name "American-Italian" rather than "Italian-American." The distinction mattered to him. He wanted to emphasize that the descendants of Italian immigrants in New Orleans and across the Southeast were Americans first, carrying forward a rich cultural inheritance that enriched their country rather than divided their loyalties.
Today the AICC houses the American Italian Museum, the Louisiana American Italian Sports Hall of Fame, Italian language classrooms, event spaces, a gift shop, and a research library. It is both an archive and a living institution, a place where the Italian Catholic experience in the American South is documented, celebrated, and passed to new generations.
The Man Behind the Mission
Joseph Maselli (1924-2009) was born in Newark, New Jersey. He graduated third in his Belleville High School class of over 300 students and briefly attended Rutgers University before enlisting in the U.S. Army during World War II. While stationed at Camp Plauche in New Orleans, he met his future wife at a USO dance where she was performing. They married in 1946, and Maselli made New Orleans his permanent home.
Using the GI Bill, he earned his degree from Tulane University in 1950, completing the program in just three years through night and summer classes. Rather than pursue an accounting career, he opened a small liquor store that grew into City Wholesale Liquor, a successful distributorship that operated for over 55 years.
But business was only part of Maselli's life. By 1975, he had dedicated himself to a second calling: preserving Italian heritage and fighting the prejudice that Italian-Americans still faced. He founded the Italian American Federation of the Southeast, an umbrella organization that grew to encompass over 9,000 members across Louisiana, Mississippi, and Texas. He launched the Italian American Digest in 1973, a quarterly publication that now reaches over 20,000 readers. He served as ethnic advisor to Presidents Ford, Carter, Reagan, and Bush.
Among his most visible achievements was coordinating the "Italian Village" at the 1984 World's Fair in New Orleans, which attracted hundreds of thousands of visitors. Harry Connick Jr. made his stage debut there, and Bob Hope filmed a television special from the site.
For his lifetime of work, Maselli received the Statue of Liberty Ellis Island Medal of Freedom, the National Conference of Christians and Jews Weiss Award, the Anti-Defamation League's Torch of Liberty Award, and Italy's highest civilian commendation, the title of "Grand Ufficiale."
His son, Frank Maselli, now serves as chairman of the AICC, continuing his father's mission.
Inside the Museum
The American Italian Museum tells the story of Italian immigration to the Southeast through photographs, articles, family histories, and artifacts. The collection includes an antique pasta cutting machine, a traditional Sicilian cart, and extensive documentation of how Italian families built new lives in Louisiana while maintaining their cultural identity.
One of the museum's signature exhibits is a traditional St. Joseph's Altar. This deeply Catholic tradition, brought to America by Sicilian immigrants, features an elaborate tiered display of breads, pastries, vegetables, flowers, and religious images offered in thanksgiving to St. Joseph, patron of workers and families. Joseph Maselli himself was known for contributing to altars throughout the Archdiocese of New Orleans and helped sponsor the annual altar on the Piazza d'Italia adjacent to the museum.
The St. Joseph's Altar tradition carries profound theological significance. It originated during a medieval famine in Sicily, when the people prayed to St. Joseph for relief. When the rains came and the harvest was saved, the Sicilians prepared elaborate feasts in his honor, always inviting the poor to eat first. The tradition continues today as an act of gratitude and charity, with altar foods distributed to anyone who comes. In New Orleans, St. Joseph's Day (March 19) is one of the most widely observed Italian Catholic traditions, with altars appearing in churches, homes, and community centers across the city.
The museum recently underwent renovation, and its updated exhibits trace the journey of Italian immigrants from their arrival in the Crescent City to their lasting impact on its culture, food, music, and faith. Admission is $8 for adults, $5 for seniors and students, and free for children under 12.
Programs That Keep Traditions Alive
The AICC runs year-round programming designed to preserve Italian culture as a living practice rather than a museum piece.
Italian Language Classes: The center offers four eight-week sessions annually at beginner, intermediate, and advanced levels. Learning Italian connects participants to ancestral voices, to the prayers their grandparents recited, to Dante and Petrarch in their original language, and to a whole dimension of Catholic devotional life that translation cannot fully capture.
Trips to Italy: The AICC organizes guided journeys through Sicily, Naples, and the Amalfi Coast, giving members the opportunity to walk the streets their ancestors left and experience the culture firsthand.
Dual Italian Citizenship Assistance: For descendants of Italian immigrants, Italy offers a path to citizenship by descent (jure sanguinis). The AICC provides guidance through the complex application process, helping families formalize a legal connection to their ancestral homeland.
Translation and Interpretation Services: Professional Italian-English translation services serve the local community, businesses, and institutions.
Genealogy Research: Through the American Italian Research Library at the East Bank Regional Library in Metairie, researchers can access a collection of over 5,500 books, 400 oral histories, and files on 25,000 individuals, an extraordinary resource for anyone tracing Italian-American family roots.
Events and Celebrations: The AICC hosts annual St. Joseph's Day celebrations, the Festa d'Italia in the Piazza, and the Louisiana American Italian Sports Hall of Fame banquet, which recognizes athletes and leaders with awards including the Joseph Maselli Heritage Award and the Louis Prima Arts and Entertainment Award.
Event Space: The Renaissance Room is available for private events, adding to the center's role as a community gathering place.
The Italian Catholic Story in New Orleans
To understand the AICC's significance, you need to appreciate the scale of Italian immigration and its impact on New Orleans. Between 1880 and 1920, millions of Italians came to America. A significant number settled in New Orleans, drawn by the port city's warm climate, its existing Latin and Catholic culture, and economic opportunities in fishing, agriculture, and trade.
They brought with them a form of Catholicism woven into every aspect of daily life. In the villages they left, patron saints watched over each town, feast days marked the rhythm of the year, and religious processions wound through streets blessing homes and businesses. Faith was not separated from culture. It was embedded in language, cuisine, family structure, and community bonds.
The adjustment was not always smooth. Early Italian immigrants faced discrimination, and their expressive devotional practices sometimes clashed with the more restrained worship styles of the Irish Catholic hierarchy that dominated the American Church at the time. But the Italians persisted. They built parishes dedicated to their patron saints, established mutual aid societies that combined practical assistance with religious observance, and created neighborhoods where Italian Catholic culture could flourish.
By the mid-twentieth century, Italian-Americans in New Orleans had become an integral part of the city's identity. Their influence on cuisine alone transformed the city's food culture. And their Catholic traditions, particularly the St. Joseph's Altar and the devotional practices of Holy Week, became part of the broader fabric of New Orleans Catholic life, celebrated by residents of every background.
Why Cultural Preservation Matters for the Catholic Community
The work of the AICC matters beyond the Italian-American community because it addresses a challenge facing all American Catholics: maintaining particular cultural expressions of the faith in an age of homogenization.
The Catholic Church has always been simultaneously universal and particular. An Ethiopian Catholic and a Polish Catholic and a Filipino Catholic all profess the same Creed and receive the same sacraments, but they express faith through different cultural forms shaped by centuries of history. When cultural organizations preserve these distinctive traditions, they enrich the entire Church.
The Italian devotion to St. Joseph offers something valuable to Catholics of every background. The tradition of the St. Joseph's Altar, with its emphasis on gratitude, generosity to the poor, and communal celebration, models a form of Catholic life that integrates faith into the most ordinary activities of cooking, eating, and gathering with neighbors.
For Catholic families in Louisiana and across the Southeast, the AICC is both a resource and an invitation. It invites participation in traditions that carry centuries of Catholic wisdom, whether your last name is Italian or not.
How to Visit and Support the AICC
The American Italian Cultural Center is located at 537 South Peters Street, New Orleans, LA 70130. The phone number is (504) 522-7294. The museum is open Monday through Friday from 10:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m. and Saturday from 10:00 a.m. to 3:00 p.m.
Membership in the AICC includes free museum admission, a subscription to the Italian American Digest, invitations to member-exclusive events, discounts on classes and programs, and gift shop discounts.
You can find the American Italian Cultural Center's complete listing in the Discover Catholic Business directory, which now includes over 46,000+ Catholic businesses and organizations across 23 categories. Whether you are looking for Catholic cultural organizations, parishes, or businesses that share your values, the directory connects you with the Catholic community.
If you run a Catholic cultural organization, heritage society, or community center not yet in the directory, consider adding your listing free to help Catholics find and support institutions that preserve the rich diversity of our faith.
Sources
- American Italian Cultural Center. "Our History" and "Joseph Maselli, Founder." aiccnola.org
- Wikipedia. "American Italian Cultural Center." en.wikipedia.org
- WWLTV. "Renovated Museum Celebrates New Orleans' Italian History, Culture." wwltv.com
- Clarion Herald (Archdiocese of New Orleans). "Museum of Local Italian History, Culture to Expand." clarionherald.org