MIDTOWN — Intermittent showers made pestering appearances during the 264th NYC St. Patrick’s Day Parade on March 17, but the throngs of spectators didn’t seem to care.

The annual celebration of New York City’s Irish diaspora stepped off at 11 a.m. on 5th Avenue, with the NYPD’s mounted patrol, soldiers of the “Fighting Sixty-Ninth” Regiment of the New York National Guard, and Grand Marshal Mike Benn of Rockaway Beach and his aides.

Spectators assembled shoulder-to-shoulder on both sides of the street. The parade participants marched past Cardinal Timothy Dolan of New York, Bishop Robert Brennan of Brooklyn, and other dignitaries in front of St. Patrick’s Cathedral.

Bishop Brennan noted he was concerned the weather would “dampen things” as he stood on the cathedral’s steps, joined by his brother, Thomas, a retired NYPD officer, and his wife, Patricia.

“At first, it didn’t look like a big crowd,” Bishop Brennan said. “And then all of a sudden, everybody emerged. The Irish are very hardy, very strong.”

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The St. Patrick’s Day Foundation, which organizes the annual event, estimates that it’s the world’s oldest and largest St. Patrick’s Day parade, typically drawing 2 million spectators and 150,000 participants each year.

If that sounds far-fetched, consider that Elaine Barclay and Tracey Anderson from Kilmarnock, Ayrshire, Scotland, said they’ve known about the NYC parade as long as they’ve been friends — more than 40 years.

Anderson said the duo arrived on March 14 to celebrate St. Patrick’s Day.

“We came prepared,” Barclay said of herself and Anderson, who wore outfits they brought from Scotland — Green cowboy hats, green wigs, and shamrock stickers on their cheeks.

“Most people have a mix of Irish in Scotland,” Barclay said. “My grandfather was Irish. Her mother was Irish.”

“That’s right,” Anderson quipped. “Mum was the proud owner of an Irish passport.”

Father Edward Kane, pastor of Holy Family-St. Laurence Parish in Canarsie, was not dressed in his usual clerical attire. Instead, he wore the Army combat uniform of the New York National Guard, in which he serves as chaplain for the 69th.

Before the parade, he stood outside the cathedral with a shillelagh tucked under one arm, waiting for “his guys to show up” to march in the parade.

Father Kane said the National Guard typically sends 1,000 troops to the parade, but this year, it would be only about 30 because units were filling in as security during a prison guard labor strike upstate.

“We did the same thing during COVID,” Father Kane said.

Asked if the parade ever gets old, Bishop Brennan replied, “Never!”

“It’s always exciting and always uplifting,” he added. 

Prior to the parade, Bishop Brennan joined Cardinal Dolan, auxiliary bishops from the Archdiocese of New York, and clergy from other boroughs in celebrating the St. Patrick’s Day Mass. 

The homilist was Archbishop Eamon Martin of Armagh in Northern Ireland, who came at Cardinal Dolan’s invitation. Bishop Brennan later described the homily as powerful.

Archbishop Martin said the Christian hope celebrated during this 2025 Jubilee Year is much more than human optimism. It is a hope forged in the difficulties of this life but with eyes fixed on Jesus Christ. That is what St. Patrick did, Archbishop Martin said.

“Patrick was trafficked into slavery in Ireland as a young teenager, but despite his isolation and the pain of loneliness so far from his home and family, Patrick turned with all his heart to God. He dared to hope,” he said.

And like St. Patrick, he said, people today must dare to hope at a time when the stockpiling of national military arsenals gets more attention than “the needs of the hungry and the common good.

His comments echoed continuous headlines of the wars in Gaza and Ukraine, the United States border crisis, and environmental degradation.

Archbishop Martin concluded by urging everyone “To be strong protectors of life, generous helpers of the poor and the marginalized, and welcoming friends for those who, like St. Patrick, and so many of our Irish ancestors, are forcibly displaced from their homeland.”