The parade sets off along Hicks Street on Saturday. (Via Facebook).
BY JACK DELANEY | jdelaney@queensledger.com
CARROLL GARDENS — If you were in South Brooklyn last weekend, you might have seen an apparition floating down the street.
On Saturday, the Church of Sacred Hearts & St. Stephen organized the 78th edition of the annual Our Lady of Sorrows procession, carrying a somber, life-size statue of the Virgin Mary through the neighborhood before returning to the church for fireworks.
The painted “Maria Addolorata” was commissioned in 1948 in Mola, a small town in the Italian region of Apulia — on the heel of the boot — which has had a disproportionately high rate of emigration to Carroll Gardens. A block of Court Street was formally co-named “Mola di Bari Way” in 2010, and today the Van Westerhout Cittadini Molesi, a social club for descendants of Mola, is one of only two such local institutions that remain.
In its latest installment, roughly 100 parishioners sat for an Italian-language mass, with a special appearance by Robert Brennan, the Bishop of Brooklyn. Then the parade was off, stopping by the 76th Precinct for a blessing from an NYPD chaplain and turning back near Marco Polo, at the intersection of Court and Union.
“Picture Carroll Gardens, Brooklyn, generations later, brass bands, candles, old Italian hymns, and tears in the eyes of people from Mola di Bari,” wrote J.M. de Palma, who pens “Saint Spotlights” for the church. “Since 1948, your families have carried me through these streets, not as a statue to admire, but as your Mother to accompany. I have watched grandparents arrive with hope, mothers pray through worry, fathers carry burdens, and children learn the songs. You did not leave Mola behind. You carried its faith across the sea, and I came with you. Newcomers watch and do not understand your devotion. How will you teach them?”
For as long as Carroll Gardens has been gentrifying — the process began accelerating in the 80s, and went into hyper-drive in the late 2010s — the primary angle for many citywide outlets, if they weren’t tracking the Gowanus Canal cleanup, has been the fate of Italian-Americans in the area.
This year brought a fresh wave of coverage: After New York Magazine entered the scrum to understand why Caputo’s Bakery closed so abruptly, it published a follow-up with a doleful headline: “Where Did All the Italians of Carroll Gardens Go?” (For what it’s worth, and as the article itself recognizes, similar themes were being plumbed over a decade ago — a 2011 piece in Brooklyn Ink called “An Italian-American Sunset Falls on Carroll Gardens” quoted one man as saying, “We’re not here anymore.”)
But Saturday’s procession didn’t get the memo. As it stands, Our Lady of Sorrows continues to roam the neighborhood, watching over it with a tearful but benevolent eye as she approaches her 80th birthday.
