ALLEGANY, N.Y. – Some would call it fate; others, a coincidence.
Sister Margaret Carney calls it divine providence.

Sister Margaret, president of St. Bonaventure University, taking
direction from Matthew 7:7 – seek and ye shall find – set out to
find the family of Father Pamphilo da Magliano in Assisi, Italy,
the university’s founder.

She had little more than plain faith. Faith in divine
providence, something that happens under God’s control. She had the
name of the village, the name of the family and an e-mail
address.

Not much to go on, but enough. Her mission was accomplished.

But Sister Margaret’s journey really started a year before when
she received an e-mail from Laura Pietrobattista, a descendent of
Father Pamphilo, an Italian who spoke English with an Irish brogue.
She had been notified by a Franciscan friar that Sister Margaret
was looking for the family. The family, in turn, was looking for
more information on an ancestor and the university he founded.

Sister Margaret responded to Pietrobattista, but did not hear
anything back.

“I assumed that the international e-mail did not connect,” she
said.

But Sister Margaret never got that e-mail out of her mind so
when she took her annual pilgrimage to Rome, she, along with Father
Andre Cirino of the Immaculate Conception Province of Friars and
Sister Ann Bremmer, OSF, a recent graduate of the Franciscan
Institute, decided to search for the family in Magliano Dei
Marsi.

“We started off going … we were on our way,” she said, when they
came to a little town she compared with Bradford, Pa., and she
thought, “this may be the most ridiculous goose chase.”

But the golden egg was closer that she imagined.

They approached a postman and showed him the name
Pietrobattista. He pointed to a street they should go. After
knocking on a couple of unanswered doors, Sister Margaret
approached an elderly woman sweeping off her stoop.

“I approached her and asked, ‘Signora, can you help me. I am
looking for the family Pietrobattista.’ With a shocked look she
said, ‘It’s my family.’ And she pointed to a brass plaque over the
door – Vincenzo and Maria Pietrobattista,” said Sister Margaret.
“Feeling as though I was about to faint, I said, ‘Signora, I am the
president of St. Bonaventure University.'”

“I couldn’t breathe,” Sister Margaret said.

Maria Pietrobattista, invited her guests into her home, then
tried to call her daughter, Laura, at work. But Maria didn’t have
to look that far, Laura had taken the day off because it was her
birthday.

“I could hear her yelling ‘Sister Margaret, Sister Margaret”
when Laura’s mother called her on her cell phone. She was just
upstairs.

“We fell into each other.”

Laura wanted to know why it had taken so long for Sister
Margaret to visit them. “Laura, we had no idea you were alive,”
Sister Margaret said, adding Laura said, “It is like someone
dropped you out of heaven.”

After a few hours, about 20 members of the family, fourth
generation descendants of Pamphilo’s brother,convened to meet the
trio from St. Bonaventure, an event the family is still talking
about, according to an e-mail to The Era from Laura Pietrobattista
translated from Italian.

The older family members remembered the 100th anniversary of St.
Bonaventure University because the president, Father Tom Plassmann,
went to the village and held a daylong festival.

“We were very happy, very joyous when we met Sister
Margaret.”

“The whole family has happy and honored by the visit. For me
personally, it was like a beautiful birthday present.”

The three also left a “little piece” of Father Pamphilo -ða
pamphlet on the history of St. Bonaventure University compiled by
Father Dominic Monti, a Bradford native.

“I made two promises to them: that I would bring the leaders of
the University to Magliano to visit the home of Pamphilo and that I
would bring them to America to see this University. And I intend to
keep both,” Sister Margaret said.

Laura Pietrobattista confirmed in her e-mail that she plans to
come to Allegany in 2008.

“I feel like I am carrying out a project, a focus on him and
what he’d done at St. Bonaventure,” Sister Margaret said.

Pamphilo worked in the U.S. only 10 years, but that time was
well spent. He founded the university, the province of the Friars
Minor and two congregations of Franciscan Sisters – the Sisters of
Allegany, N.Y., and the Sisters of Joliette, Ill.

Finding information about someone from long ago is nothing new
to Sister Margaret. She would go on adventures, go to a town where
a nun had lived centuries ago and say, “If you want your story
told, I need your help.”

Inevitably, she would find what she was looking for, much like
what happened in May.

“This is unbelievable. I had a feeling there is a connection
between the living and the dead, a shared vision in life.”

Sister Margaret was also amazed by the timing.

“Last year, it was the 150th anniversary of when the friars
arrived in western New York. This year is the 150th of laying the
cornerstone,” Sister Margaret said. “This is almost scary … out of
the blue.”

“God’s providence gets me places,” Sister Margaret said. “The
story keeps unfolding … I am reaching for what is the next question
… the next challenge.”