Margherita Marchione

Sister Margherita Marchione (February 19, 1922 – May 20, 2021) was an American Roman Catholic sister, writer, teacher and apologeticist, who dedicated herself in her later years to the defense of Pope Pius XII.

Early life

Marchione was born in February 1922 in Little Ferry, New Jersey, one of eight children of Crescenzo and Felicia Marchione, immigrants from Campania, Italy. She attended St. Mary's School in nearby Hackensack, and in 1935 she joined the Religious Teachers Filippini. She became a nun in 1938 at the age of 16.

Marchione received her B.A. from Georgian Court College, and her M.A. and Ph.D. from Columbia University, and eventually became a professor at Fairleigh Dickinson University, after earning a doctorate on philosophy at Columbia. She was the first nun to become a tenured professor at Fairleigh Dickinson University, where she taught Italian language and literature for nearly two decades.

On Filippo Mazzei

Marchione's interest in Filippo Mazzei began in 1974 bicentennial. Filippo Mazzei (1730–1816) was an Italian physician, philosopher, diplomat, and author, who moved to Virginia, fought in the American Revolution, and became a lifelong personal friend of Thomas Jefferson.

The author of seven volumes on Mazzei, Marchione donated approximately 2,500 printed and published artifacts, works of art and decorative objects of Philip Mazzei to the Thomas Jefferson Foundation. Foundation librarian Jack Robertson stated, "The collection compiled by Sister Margherita includes not only facsimiles of all of Mazzei's correspondence, but relatively obscure publications on the role of Italians in American history." She launched an ultimately successful campaign to get the United States Postal Service (USPS) to designate a stamp to commemorate Mazzei in the form of a 40 cent airmail stamp in 1980 to commemorate Mazzei's 250th birthday.