You probably know the outline of the story of Vincenzo di Francesca, the Italian man who found a copy of the Book of Mormon – minus its title page – in an ashcan in New York City in 1910, became converted to its truth before knowing where it came from, and spent 40 years preaching the gospel before he was finally able to be baptized. His brief first-person account appears in the 1988 Ensign; his story is included in the Church film How Rare a Possession. Keepa posted the letterhead he was using in 1935, five years after finally learning the name of the book and the Church that had published it.

The published/filmed accounts focus on his conversion and his decades of faithfulness, cut off for years from contact with the Church, and at other times in contact with Church members only by letter. What you may never have heard before is the struggle he faced – largely unknown even to Vincenzo himself – to gain credibility in the eyes of Church leaders with whom he corresponded, due largely to discomfort with the – how to describe it? – enthusiastic? emotional? flamboyant? manner in which Vincenzo presented himself.

His English, especially by the end of his life, was excellent, but he wrote in superlatives, in grand, sweeping phrases learned from books, rather than in the common, direct style more usual in ordinary speech and written communications. Sometimes he decorated his letters in elaborate hand-drawn flourishes, and addressed his envelopes with titles like “Exalted” and “Most Reverend” – terms that made his correspondents uneasy. You can get a sense of his enthusiasm from that letterhead, where he announces himself as the president of the Church in Italy, and lists the publications he has translated – translations he actually did make; there is no exaggeration about that. His letters spoke of how he felt led by the Holy Ghost to do as he did, and to preach the gospel to anyone in Sicily who would listen – but the language was so embroidered that correspondents could not be certain whether he was writing of experiences that they could take seriously, or whether he was proclaiming the sort of revelations that they often received from somewhat unbalanced minds.

Apostle John A. Widtsoe was president of the European missions when Vincenzo finally learned the source of his unidentified volume of scripture, and Vincenzo wrote to him using an address he had found on some tract. The two remained in sporadic contact with each other through the rest of Elder Widtsoe’s life. Vincenzo was still unbaptized when Elder Widtsoe died. Because of this early contact, Elder Widtsoe was sometimes called upon to explain Vincenzo’s letters written to other Church leaders. His summary of Vincenzo’s history and Elder Widtsoe’s connections to him, written after Elder Widtsoe had returned home from that European mission, suggest some of the hesitation with which Vincenzo was met. This summary also shows that Elder Widtsoe, one of the more cosmopolitan Church leaders, recognized that cultural factors, not spiritual ones, might lie at the heart of the unease regarding Vincenzo:

Mr. Vincenzo Di Francesca, who lives on the island of Sicily in Italy, has been an investigator of the Gospel for a considerable time. His story is a very interesting one. He became converted to the truth of Mormonism through the Book of Mormon. He was at that time a Methodist minister, preaching Methodism on the island of Sicily. He began to preach Mormon doctrine in the Methodist chapel and was finally excommunicated from the Methodist Church for his heresy.

He has been pleading for quite a long time for baptism and for ordination to the Priesthood, with the hope that he might begin proselyting work in Italy in behalf of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. To look the man over I asked two returning Elders to call at Sicily and become acquainted with him. They gave a very good report of him; however, the two brethren differed as to the advisability of baptizing him at once, the one Elder hesitating because he was not quite sure whether Di Francesca was thoroughly sincere or of thorough understanding with respect to the Gospel. Later on Di Francesca seemed to have revelations given to him, which in his disjointed English, due to his unfamiliarity with it, he sent to President Grant.

During my two visits to Italy I was unable to make contact with him, since I did not have the time to cross over to Sicily. The man is living very humbly, and appears to have full faith in the Gospel. He might be made a useful member of the Church if we are sure that his mind is working straight. One must always take into account in dealing with South Europeans their peculiar excitable temperament, which makes us of the North often fail to understand our Southern brothers. When they speak volubly, with full metaphor, we sometimes wonder if they are mentally straight. This was impressed upon me during my visit to the Near East, where everybody seemed to speak about the most commonplace matters with arms, eyebrows, and loud voices.

It seems a pity to withhold membership from him, yet I have always been just a little in doubt and have thought that a little delay would not harm the matter at all. He is anxious to begin proselyting in Italy, and probably will expect some compensation therefor. That perhaps would not be so serious a matter, but the fact that he began to have revelations – not at all antagonistic to the Church I may say, but revelations directing him to do thus and so with respect to the Church – made me feel that perhaps we should look into his case very carefully before allowing him membership in the Church, especially since a wrong beginning in Italy might be more than usually harmful.

He seems to understand the Gospel quite well, and has always manifested a fine spirit in his letters. We are so like to misunderstand him because of his poor knowledge of every-day English. There are always a number of Elders who go to Italy [i.e., as tourists at the conclusion of their missions in Europe], so it should not be difficult to have the ordinance performed should you decide it is the proper thing to do.

But it would be another two decades before Vincenzo – whose faith never wavered from beginning to end – would receive that privilege.

CORRECTION (5 April 2017): I was misinformed as to the date of Vincenzo’s baptism. He was baptized early in 1951, and Elder Widtsoe was aware of that baptism. He even sent a note of congratulation to Vincenzo. (There’s no excuse for my error — the date is plainly given in materials I linked to in this post. Sorry ’bout that.)