‘Mr. St. John’s’ Joseph Sciame retires after six decades of service — and finally dishes on secret he shared with Silvio Berlusconi
A man known as “the face” of St. John’s University has retired after 61 years – and he finally revealed a secret he shared with former Italian prime minister Silvio Berlusconi.
Longtime Vice President Joseph Sciame, 82, helped educate generations of students including a high-profile bishop and Berlusconi’s daughter, whose presence on campus he kept hidden from newspapers and paparrazzi.
“If there were a Mount Rushmore-like memorial for St. John’s University, it would feature Joe Sciame’s face,” said SJU spokesman Brian Browne, who began his own career working for Sciame, calling him a “great ambassador.”
Sciame — a St. John’s alum himself — started working for the university in 1962 when John F. Kennedy was president and the Mets became a baseball franchise, spanning 12 US presidents, six popes and six university presidents.
“It’s been incredible,” Sciame said of his long service at New York’s largest Catholic university and the second largest in the nation. “St. John’s University allows people to be who they are, thanks to education and a spirit of service.”
He said he was moved from the tributes that poured in on his LinkedIn page when people heard he retired.
“I helped so many people without even realizing it,” the devout Catholic said.
“It’s a good run but I’m still going. As long as the lord gives me an opportunity to do good stuff, I do it.”
But the Army vet isn’t planning to kick his feet up any time soon, with ongoing service to so many other charitable and civic groups.
Scaime personally crafted the financial aid packages of thousands of students, always with the goal that they could afford to enroll and graduate from St. John’s without accumulating massive debt.
One of his students from the 1980s is now one of America’s most influential prelates — Bishop Robert Brennan overseeing the Brooklyn-Queens Diocese.
Brennan, who said he was born the same year Sciame started at SJU, credits him with helping him afford a Catholic education at St. John’s.
He had a brother and sister who also went to college, so it wasn’t easy for the family to pull it off, he said.
“Joe was an important person to me in my time at St. John’s,” said Brennan, who graduated in 1984. “He recently attended my mother’s wake. That’s the type of person he is.”
Sciame served as VP for both community relations and enrollment and financial services and only left the Catholic school for three years while serving in the Army in the mid-1960s.
In his spare time, he co-founded the Bedford Stuyvesant New Beginnings Charter School, where he still serves as a trustee, and has headed numerous national and regional Italian-American civic groups including the Order Sons and Daughters of Italy in America.
He currently is president of the Sons of Italy Foundation and was involved in the campaign to erect a statue in the city in honor of Mother Frances Cabrini.
Bishop Brennan noted Sciame remains heavily involved with the Brooklyn-Queens diocese, where he serves on the board of the Futures in Education, which raises donations for scholarships so needy students can afford a Catholic education.
While working for St. John’s, Sciame’s deep ties in the Italian-American community brought his service to the City University of New York. He sat on the search committee that hired the current dean at CUNY’s John Calandra Italian-American Institute, Anthony Tamburri.
Tamburri said Sciame gets down in the trenches with him to get things done.
“Joe has a lot to offer. He’s a worker. He’s right there with you,” said Tamburri. “His ears are always open. He asks, ‘How can we do this?’ One way or the other there’s going to be a result.”
Sciame started his career at St. John’s as a financial administrator, at a time when the federal government launched new loan and grant programs for students under then-President Lyndon Johnson’s “Great Society” agenda.
He would eventually become a director and then vice president of financial aid services and enrollment, and was elected chairman of the National Association of Student Financial Aid Administrators.
The typically modest Sciame was a bit gleeful in sharing an anecdote with The Post about the four years that Eleonara Berlusconi attended St. John’s before she received a business degree in 2009.
Her father, then the Italian premier, called Sciame to say his wife and daughter Eleonara would visit the campus.
To avoid notice, they used the wife’s maiden name.
Sciame — who dealt personally with Silvio and the Berlusconi family — was one of the few people on the Queens’ campus who knew the family connection.
During a reception at the St. John’s chapel following Eleonora’s graduation, Silvio Berlusconi handed a smiling Sciame a blue box with an Italian paperweight as a memento.
The moment was captured in a photo, with Eleonora and then SJU President Rev. Donald Harrington in the background beaming.
“Prime Minister Berlusconi wanted Eleanora to be a regular student, to study and graduate without incident,” Sciame quipped saying he knows “how nosy” journalists can be.
“We were able to do it.”
