Our assistant pastor is Italian. Very Italian—I have the parmesan cheese bills to prove it.Father Giovanni delighted the congregation Christmas Eve with his beautiful rendition of “Tu scendi dalle stelle,” a carol as dear to Italians as Silent Night is elsewhere in the world.But I didn’t catch him humming or singing it in the house. What I did hear as he moved about the rectory was “pa rum pum pum pum, rum pum pum pum.”On one hand, “The Little Drummer Boy” is no match for “Tu scendi dalle stelle.” For one thing, the Italian carol was written by St. Alphonsus
