Pontifical Shrine of Our Lady of Mount Carmel

The devotion that became the Pontifical Shrine of Our Lady of Mount Carmel began in the summer of 1881, when a small group of Italian immigrants from the town of Polla in the province of Salerno, Italy — for whom the Madonna del Carmine was Protectress — gathered in a rented room on the ground floor of a tenement on East 111th Street near the East River. There they prayed the Rosary before a printed paper image of Our Lady and shared a meal. The informal devotion grew explosively over the next two years, attracting thousands of Italian immigrants to a street procession on the July feast day. An Italian priest, Fr. Domenico Vento, began celebrating the sacraments for the community in their makeshift chapel. In May 1884, Fr. Emiliano (Emil) Kirner, a German priest of the Pallottine Order (Society of the Catholic Apostolate), arrived to serve the growing Italian community. Under his direction, and largely with the sweat and labor of the Italian immigrant parishioners themselves — who laid the brick during evenings after their day's work — the present church was constructed at a cost of about US$40,000. The cornerstone was laid on 20 September 1884; Mass was first celebrated in the new building in 1885, and it formally opened on 7 August 1887. The parish was the second Italian parish in New York City and the first southern Italian parish in the city. In 1883, Antonio Petrucci, an Italian immigrant saloon owner from Polla, had a statue of Our Lady of Mount Carmel sent from Italy to replace the paper image. When the church was completed, ownership of the statue was formally transferred to the parish and it was enshrined in the lower church. Devotion to the Madonna grew rapidly; Italian immigrants offered wedding rings, earrings and necklaces in petition and thanksgiving, and multiple miraculous cures were reported. Because of the immense devotion and favors attributed to the Shrine, the Canons of St. Peter's Basilica, at the behest of Pope Leo XIII, conducted a formal investigation and declared that the image of Our Lady of Mount Carmel should be canonically crowned with a golden crown. Leo ordered it done but died before finalization. Pope St. Pius X reviewed and published the decree under his own name, and personally sent two emeralds from the Vatican to be fitted into the crown. On 10 July 1904, in the presence of a vast crowd, Archbishop John Murphy Farley executed the rite of coronation in Thomas Jefferson Park to accommodate the pilgrims — making the shrine only the third formal pontifical coronation outside of Europe. In 1906, Pius X granted a plenary indulgence in perpetuity to pilgrims visiting during the feast days of July 6–23. In 1923–24, Pope Pius XI approved the transfer of the Sanctuary designation from the lower church to the upper church, affirming the Shrine's status as a major Marian shrine; in 1953, Pope Pius XII declared the high altar a privileged major Marian altar. The Shrine's annual July street feast and procession — at one time attended by more than 100,000 and once said to draw up to 500,000 — long stood as the largest single-sponsored religious procession in New York. The complementary Italian 'Dancing of the Giglio' festival, suspended for 29 years, was revived in 2000 and is held on the second weekend of August by the Giglio Society of East Harlem. On 10 July 2004, the parish held a public reenactment of the 1904 coronation for its 100th anniversary. In 2013 the parish was placed under the care of Polish Pallottine Fathers, and in 2015 the crowned Madonna statue underwent a complete artistic and physical restoration. Since 2015 the pastor has been Fr. Marian Wierzchowski, SAC, and the parish today celebrates Mass in English, Spanish, Polish, Latin (both Ordinary and Extraordinary Form), and Haitian Creole.