On July 16, 1251, the Virgin Mary appeared to Carmelite priest St. Simon Stock and presented him with a brown scapular. “It must be a sign and a privilege for you and for all Carmelites,” she promised him. “Whoever dies wearing the scapular will not suffer eternal fire.”
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.
On the evening of June 23, a couple hundred Our Lady of Mount Carmel parishioners kicked off the Giglio Season with the annual “Taking Out of the Boat.”
There will be no Procession of the Giglio at the Shrine Church of Our Lady of Mount Carmel this year, but the church will still celebrate a feast day with scaled down events.
The Feast of Our Lady of Mount Carmel, a highlight of the summer in Williiamsburg, has been canceled due to the coronavirus pandemic.
The pews of Our Lady of Mount Carmel Church in Williamsburg were packed July 16 as Bishop Nicholas DiMarzio celebrated a bilingual Mass honoring the parish feast day in English and Italian.
A fresh wave of able-bodied lifters has rejuvenated an Italian tradition that dates back more than a century in Williamsburg and more than a millennium in Nola, Italy.
My dear brothers and sisters in the Lord,Brooklyn celebrates many patronal feasts, but for Brooklyn and Queens, the Feasts of St. Paolino and Our Lady of Mount Carmel celebrated at Our Lady of Mount Carmel Church in Williamsburg are what the Italians call the “la festa di tutte le feste.” San Gennaro uses that expression for its feast in Manhattan, but in Brooklyn, it is Mount Carmel-St Paolino, that creates the great Italian festival each year.
