Ooooh. About Boccone del Povero, I know quite a bit. As a matter of fact, my dad's great aunt and your grandfather would have been arriving at San Marco as children about the same time. I wrote a story about it, here:
http://web.me.com/seabreezes1/Karen_Spe ... ssage.html
also a paragraph here:
http://web.me.com/seabreezes1/Karen_Spe ... story.html
"Julia LoChirco’s little sister, ‘Nina, was sent to the Palermo orphanage/poorhouse at San Marco, begun in 1873 by the Blessed Father Giacomo Cusmano (1834 -1888). San Marco was run by an association Father Cusmano founded in 1867 and commonly known as “Boccone del Povero,” which was aligned with the St. Vincent de Paul Society. At that time, the mission housed 80 people, mostly orphans and elderly women. The elderly weaved and made rosaries. Assisted by a group of lay women and religious, Father Cusmano (who was also a trained medical doctor) tended to the sick and cared for the children. During the next 15 years, Father Cusmano founded a religious order, Servants of the Poor, and established other convent orphanage/poorhouses in Palermo and Agrigento. Nina did not take her final vows as a Sister Servant of the Poor until Christmas Day 1903 at age 35; however, she likely had been ministering to the sick and poor as one of the laity since her adolescence - a decade punctuated by several devastating cholera epidemics. She may have also taught needlework to the orphans. Although the order expanded to other countries in the 20th century, Sr. Maria Girolama never left Sicily. She died at age 45 - “worked to death,” according to Mama Julia. "