 Parente began his education at the Metropolitan seminary of Benevento in the 1900s and soon moved to Rome to study.His ability as a theologian was very well known even before he was ordained in 1916, and immediately after ordination he became a seminary rector in Naples, a role he was to hold for a decade, after which Parente transferred to the prestigious Pontifical Lateran University and briefly from 1934 to 1938 to the Pontifical Urbanian Athenaeum.Parente then went back to Naples to found the Faculty of Theology and Canon Law in his former seminary, and he was again rector from 1940 to 1955.