Santa Rita, Maronites, Father Jay Samonie (Assemani's Bibliotheca Orientalis) - connecting the dots

 https://catholicism.org/maronites-saints.html

Father Jay (of Detroit Parrish) - Samonie is the 'American' immigrant spelling of the Syrian 

Jacob Laba Assemani

See the Syrian Catholic Assemani that is the source of the many 'papers' on Syrian Christian 'Doctor's of Christianity' - as detailed below.

Father Jay was such a brilliant light... his seminary was in Detroit, then Italy... granted easily as one of the most talented already, and his family linkage to the Assemani gave the American immigrant access to Italian seminary.    For example, only two students per year would be accepted for seminary in Italy out of the Detroit area.   I recall Father Gaston telling stories of Father Jay in early years in Detroit seminary... Jay and Gaston essentially shifted into the Catholic system at middle school into high school...  Jay was couple years elder than Gaston.  Gaston talks about hearing someone playing a complex piano piece... and discovering it was Jay... who was unknown to have ever played.   It was my honor to spend time with Father Gaston and hear many personal and scholarly christian topics.   Smiles.

When I visited Cascia, and met Santa Rita for the first time, my friend on the drive was discussing Santa Rita - saying Syrian -

St. Ephrem the Syrian, Doctor of the Church (d. 373).

At the time, I had not connected the dots.   The experience of prayer in the Cathedral of Santa Rita was active as I entered.

https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Samonie-1

https://syri.ac/syriacliteraryhistory

Assemani's Bibliotheca Orientalis stands at the root of Western scholarship on Syriac literature.4  Assemani was a Maronite priest from Lebanon who spent most of his life in Rome. The BO is a history of all of Syriac literature based largely on Assemani's meticulous and painstaking reading of a huge number of manuscripts. Providing generous extracts and a remarkable synthesis of material, it is a monument of careful scholarship and stands with William Wright's catalogue of Syriac in the British Museum5 as one of the two greatest efforts in the history of Syriac scholarship in the West. In fact, nearly 300 years after its publication, the BO contains texts that can still be found nowhere else. Assemani's profound knowledge of the Syriac tradition has been matched by few since him. Importantly, 

Assemani was a scholar who stood in two traditions of Syriac scholarship: the Middle Eastern and the European. His transfer of an insider's knowledge of the Syriac tradition to the West was a fortuitous act which allowed Syriac scholarship to gain a solid footing in early modern Europe. Assemani was not alone in this work: other Middle Eastern scholars made similar bridges between East and West, such as Moses of Mardin, Ibrahim al-Haqilani (sc. Echellensis), and other members of the Assemani family. The Maronite College of Rome was a key point of this transmission. With the publication of the BO, a critical mass of non-Biblical Syriac texts, along with accessible Latin translations, became newly available to European scholars. At that time, and still today, just by reading the BO one can receive an education in the whole of Syriac literature.