FLATIRON DISTRICT — Mel Alegre, a parishioner of St. Bartholomew Parish in Elmhurst, was a stranger to the 30 people who gathered to pray on Saturday, June 22, near the historic Flatiron Building.
But very few of these young-adult pilgrims to the Flatiron District knew each other.
Nor did they know any of the people joining them from Dublin, Ireland.
Yet, they all bonded quickly as Father Peter Martyr Yungwirth, pastor of St. Vincent Ferrer Parish on the Upper East Side, led them in praying the rosary.
The Irish folks, however, weren’t physically in the sweltering Flatiron Plaza. They were 3,100 miles away on O’Connell Street, a main thoroughfare in Dublin, the Irish capital.
The two groups connected via The Portal — a video link projected on huge, circular screens, forming a real-time window between the two cities.
Thus, Brother Philip Neri Mather in Dublin joined Father Yungwirth — both Dominicans — in leading this transatlantic rosary.
“What I liked about it was the unity,” Alegre said after the event. “A family that prays together will stay together. We are united in Christ and being able to pray together — that I liked.”
The Portal, unveiled in May, is one of the first in a global network of identical Portal sculptures created by Lithuanian artist Benediktas Gylys.
Another Portal connection links Vilnius, Lithuania, with Lublin, Poland. Others are under development.
The first Portal rosary was on May 31, spearheaded by social media public figure Franco Fernandez of Northern Virginia.
Fernandez, 22, also organized the June 22 event, and he plans to return to New York on the 22nd day of each month for more rosaries. Each will start at 2 p.m.
Prior to the second rosary, Fernandez described how he was baptized Catholic, but later fell away from the faith. He re-embraced Christianity as an adult, but as a Protestant — “and a very anti-Catholic one at that,” he said.
“But,” he added, “God put a lot of good people in my life that really corrected me on my mistakes and misconceptions on Catholicism. And that eventually got me to the point, ‘OK, I still have questions, but I’ve had so many of them answered.’”
Fernandez said he then chose to “take a leap of faith” back into Catholicism.
Now Fernandez wants to fill his social media platforms with messages of Catholic apologetics to address objections to the faith. “Catholic teaching, properly understood, is the most loving thing you’ll ever see,” he said. “That’s what I’ve experienced, and I want to share that with the rest of the world.”
Photos: Gregory Shemitz
The Portal is a vehicle to the goal. A friend of Fernandez on social media suggested that he figure out how to align a public prayer event with its 24/7 presence in both cities.
Other connections referred him to the Dominicans, in New York and Dublin, and The Portal rosary concept began to gel.
The first event came at a good time, Fernandez said, because The Portal was briefly closed because people on both sides had been displaying acts of drug use and lewdness.
“I do like that this turned into something that counteracts the sinful stuff that has been going on at The Portals,” Fernandez said. “That wasn’t my initial intention, but to do something cool at The Portal that is holy was a good result.”
Participants said it was social media that notified them of the event, many via Fernandez’s Instagram account, @thefrancotv.
Alegre, however, said he learned about it by following the Dublin friars’ Instagram, @irishdomincans.
Part of the group met first with Fernandez and Father Yungwirth at St. Vincent Ferrer Parish. After praying the first decades inside the historic church, they strolled onto the Q train to Flatiron Plaza. Two of the pilgrims were visiting the city while on summer break from Benedictine College in Atchison, Kansas.
“It was providence to go into St. Vincent’s and find out this was happening and then to be brought along here,” said Maggie McClelland. “When I was praying, I was thinking this adventure was what it means to be Catholic.”
Her classmate, Caeli Haigh, said the experience reinforced how the Church is universal.
“And” she added, “it reminded me that the faith is exciting. It is super fun to be Catholic.”
Ellie Clougherty is from Washington, D.C., but now has a career in New York City. She also learned about the event from Instagram, and it fueled her faith.
“Praying the rosary is usually something that’s very private so you don’t often see how common it is,” she said. “So, I was inspired to see other people who would join me. You can have a friendship from it.”
Although many didn’t know each other before, they happily gathered for a team photo with Fernandez and Father Yungwirth. The friar said he was happy to pray with Brother Mather on the other side, a Dominican dressed like him, in their order’s distinctive white habit.
“There was a lady in front of me who had no idea what the friar on the other side and I were doing,” Father Yungwirth said. “She had no concept of religious life and so being a witness to that was also really a beautiful thing.”