St. Leonard of Port Maurice Church features a tall, slender brick bell tower topped with a bright, onion-shaped copper dome that glints above the North End skyline. It opened in eighteen seventy-three as the first Italian parish in all of New England. When Italian immigrants arrived by the thousands, they crowded into the pews to hear mass in their native language. Father Antonio Manchese once stood at these doors, welcoming families who had spent weeks at sea and needed a familiar sanctuary.
St. Leonard Church
religious