Vincenzo Di Francesca and the Scorched Book of Mormon Without a Name (1910-1951)

In February 1910, Vincenzo Di Francesca, a young Methodist pastor ministering to Italian immigrants in New York City, was walking down Broadway on a cold morning when he noticed the pages of a book lying on a barrel of ashes, stirred by the wind from the open sea. Curious, he picked it up and beat it against the barrel to knock off the ashes. It was printed in English, and the title page had been torn away. The fury of the wind turned the pages, and he hastily read the names Alma, Mosiah, Mormon, Moroni, Isaiah, Lamanites, all but Isaiah names he had never before heard. He wrapped the book in a newspaper, carried it home, and cleansed its pages with denatured alcohol and cotton so he could read them.

Kneeling alone in his room, Di Francesca read the tenth chapter of Moroni and prayed to the Eternal Father in the name of His Son Jesus Christ, asking whether the book was of God and whether he might mix its words with the four Gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John in his public preaching. He testified that as he waited for an answer, his whole body became cold, his heart palpitated as if it would talk, and a gladness came over him 'as if I had found something precious, extraordinary.' The more he read, the more he felt the assurance that God had answered his prayer and that the book was of greatest benefit to all who would listen to its words.

For years Di Francesca preached from the nameless book. His congregation grew so interested that members left the chapel during his colleagues' sermons and stayed for his, and his colleagues grew angry. A synod committee censured him and ordered him to burn the book, which he refused to do. Called into the Italian army in November 1914, he saw action in France during World War I. After the war he returned to New York as a lay member and was later sent to Australia, where teaching Italian immigrants from the book again brought expulsion from the synod. Through it all, he still did not know the book's name or where the Church that published it could be found. His forty-year struggle to join the Church ended at last with his baptism in 1951.

His story became the centerpiece of the 1987 Church-commissioned film 'How Rare a Possession: The Book of Mormon,' directed by Russell D. Holt, which pairs his account with Parley P. Pratt's 1830 conversion upon first reading the Book of Mormon.