How Our Family’s Olive Oil Was Used to Consecrate the Sacraments for 78 Catholic Parishes

There is a moment in the Chrism Mass when the bishop extends his hands over the oils and breathes a prayer that has been breathed in every corner of the Church for two thousand years. The Oil of Catechumens. The Oil of the Sick. The Holy Chrism. Ancient, sacred, the very matter of the sacraments that mark a Catholic life from its beginning to its end.

This spring, that oil came from our family’s olive grove in Calabria, Southern Italy.

We donated 14 gallons of Ciccio’s Olives extra virgin olive oil to the Diocese of Allentown in Pennsylvania for the 2026 Chrism Mass. Those oils were blessed by the bishop and distributed to serve 78 parishes across the region — parishes that would use them to baptize infants, anoint the sick, ordain deacons, and confirm the faithful throughout the entire coming year.

We did not take that lightly. We still haven’t.

Our olive oil is pressed from Carolea olives grown on the Fratelli Pugliano family estate in Vena di Maida, a hill town nestled into the skinniest strip of land between the Tyrrhenian and the Ionian seas. It is a place of sun-drenched earth and ancient trees, of tanned, smiling, wrinkled faces, and of a slowness that the modern world has largely forgotten. My husband Pino grew up there. His father Francesco, the man for whom Ciccio’s Olives is named, still walks those groves.

For three generations, the Pugliano family has pressed those olives into liquid gold. For three generations, it fed their family and their neighbors. None of them ever imagined it would one day travel across an ocean to anoint a bishop’s hands.

Pino and I have always believed that Ciccio’s Olives is our vocation. Not our job, not our brand — our vocation. The word matters. A vocation is a calling, something you do not choose so much as receive. When we first started dreaming about bringing this oil to American tables, we asked ourselves, in the way you ask when you’re praying and hoping at the same time, whether something as ordinary as olive oil could serve something bigger than a meal.

The answer, it turns out, is yes.

The story was covered by Aleteia and AD Today in April 2026, and we are so grateful for it — not because of the press, but because it gives us the chance to say publicly what we have always believed privately: that the gifts we have been given are meant to be given away.

To the Diocese of Allentown and to all 78 parishes anointed with oil from our family’s ancient groves, thank you for the privilege of being part of your sacred story. And to Ciccio himself, still working among his trees in the hills of Calabria, who never dreamed any of this, who only ever wanted to press good oil — this one is for you.

If you are a parish, diocese, or Catholic community interested in Ciccio’s Olives for liturgical use, gifts, or fundraising, please reach out to us at [email protected]. We would be honored to talk.

From the groves of our family to your sacred table — this is what farm to family table truly means.