Joseph Santoro has recognized the importance of Catholic relics since he was just a teenager in Williamsburg. His Italian great-grandparents maintained devotion to several saints while attending Our Lady of Mount Carmel, and he was still in high school when he was given his first relic at the Shrine of St. John Neumann.
As a holiday personified by bounty-laden dishes on dinner tables, the Thanksgiving season can be difficult for the thousands of New Yorkers facing food hardship. In response to their need, one local nonprofit provided more than 600 hot meals at four northern Brooklyn locations this week.
Hundreds of enthusiastic spectators crowded onto Havemeyer Street in front of the Shrine Church of Our Lady of Mount Carmel on Sunday, July 9, to witness a Catholic tradition that dates back to 1887 Italy: the hoisting of the seven-story Giglio.
Turn left at the bottom of the steps of Our Lady of Mount Carmel’s St. Paulinus Hall in Williamsburg and your eyes are filled with a colorful mural celebrating this Brooklyn neighborhood and the return of the parish’s annual Giglio Feast.
An unidentified male stole a bag outside Our Lady of Mount Carmel Church on East 116th Street in Manhattan on Oct. 13. Inside was a second-class relic, a piece of stone from the Shrine of St. Michael on Mount Gargano in Italy.
