Nicola and Elisa Cavallo; couple helped found Newton parish

Nicola E. Cavallo, a 27-year-old coal miner in Modugno, Italy, began writing to the 30-year-old Elisa with permission from her father, who was the young man’s distant acquaintance from a sister church in Boston.

In April 1950, Elisa traveled to Modugno to meet her overseas pen pal. Two months later, much of the village turned out for their wedding.

The Rev. Nicola Cavallo, founder of the Faith Evangelical Church in Newtonville, and his wife, Elisa, recently died in New Hampshire.

Mrs. Cavallo died June 30, after a one-year struggle with breast cancer at the Community Hospice House in Merrimack, N.H. She was 90.

Three days later, on July 3, the Rev. Cavallo died of what doctors believe was prostate cancer at Catholic Medical Center in Manchester, N.H. He was 86.

Their two daughters, Annette Aureli of Wakefield and Grace Rosado of Manchester, held his hands and sang Italian hymns in his native language as he stopped breathing, family said.

“After Mom died, he was ready to go home,’’ said the couple’s son, Francis of Hopkinton. “He was ready to go meet his maker.’’

The Rev. Cavallo grew up in the southern Italian province of Bari, working in blacksmith and bicycle shops as a teen.

Raised Roman Catholic, his curiosity about religion grew when, as a teen, he read the Bible.

He questioned the local priest, who told him to leave the interpreting to the clergy.

“That didn’t sit well with him,’’ his son said. “At age 16, he converted from Catholicism to Protestantism, which in Italy is not something you do. That changed his future.’’

A year later, as World War II raged in Europe, the Italian military drafted him. Because the Rev. Cavallo was a conscientious objector, he was enrolled as a photographer, his son said.

In 1943, a base that the Rev. Cavallo’s unit was occupying in Albania came under fire. He fled to Greece, where he spent 16 months as a refugee.

Back home years later, the Rev. Cavallo joined the local Protestant church, where he met the man who became the link to his future wife.

“In 1949, I was back in Italy,’’ reads an entry in Mr. Cavallo’s journal, which his son now owns. “While there I saw Brother Casano, who had some interesting news.’’

Brother Casano, known only as that in family legend, had met Mrs. Cavallo’s father, Giuseppe Mangano, when he was a prisoner of war in Massachusetts. Mangano, visiting the prisoner as a member of the Italian Christian Assembly in Boston, gave Casano a photograph of his daughter and an address that Casano passed on to the Rev. Cavallo.

Mrs. Cavallo, one of seven children raised by Italian immigrants in Medford, was working as a seamstress in Boston.

Still single at 30, her father told her to expect a letter from Italy.

Months later, Mrs. Cavallo decided to make the cross-Atlantic journey to finally meet her future husband.

“She arrived by ship in Naples. I had carnations for her. I don’t know which one was redder, the carnations or me,’’ the Rev. Cavallo’s journal reads. “I saw her and she was beautiful. We kissed and soon I felt that we had known each other for a long time.’’

Mrs. Cavallo stayed with Casano during her trip, visiting the Rev. Cavallo every day. In accordance with Italian customs of the time, they never met without a chaperone.

After their June wedding, the Rev. Cavallo gathered the necessary papers and headed for the United States with his new bride.

For the couple’s first eight years they lived in Somerville, where the Rev. Cavallo worked as a carpenter at Tufts University. He worked with the college for 17 years.

Mrs. Cavallo raised their children, Annette born in 1951; Grace in 1953; and Francis in 1957.

Meanwhile, the Rev. Cavallo started on a ministerial track.

“I remember as a kid he was out every night,’’ their son said. “He’d come home from work and put on a suit. He’d either go to lead a Bible study or visit somebody in the hospital.’’

In 1959, the family moved to Medford, where the Rev. Cavallo set up a home radio studio. His Italian-language religious program would air every Sunday on a local station.

“He did it for 15 years at least,’’ their son said. “I remember him doing the tapes. I got into broadcasting myself, watching him edit tapes, talk into the microphone.’’

By 1969, the Rev. Cavallo was ready to lead his own congregation. With the full support of his wife, who became the church’s Sunday school teacher, he helped found the Faith Evangelical Church in Newton. As pastor, he led the first year of services in a cofounder’s living room, complete with organ.

The group then rented the Central Congregational Church in Newton for eight years. In 1978, the congregation built their own church.

“They built it,’’ Grace said. “A lot of them were masons, carpenters. . . . Dad was out there with his overalls on, up a ladder painting.’’

For the next seven years, he led Sunday services in what is now the Christian Pentecostal Church on Lowell Avenue in Newtonville.

In 1985, the couple retired to Altamonte Springs, Fla. Over the next 18 years, the Rev. Cavallo went on several missionary trips. In 2003, the couple moved to Manchester to be closer to family.

In addition to their three children, the Cavallos leave six grandchildren and one great-grandchild. Mrs. Cavallo also leaves three sisters: Connie Lorusso of Arizona, Stella Mangano of Medford, and Esther Alcott of Foxborough.

Services for Mrs. Cavallo have been held.

Services for the Rev. Cavallo will be held at 10 a.m. Tuesday at St. Paul Evangelical Church in Lexington. Burial will follow at Mount Auburn Cemetery in Cambridge.