Celebrating Community
Have you ever driven through Brooklyn neighborhoods in the fall and noticed booth-like structures on balconies and in yards? These booths or “sukkahs” are representative of the Jewish Festival of Sukkot (or Sukkos), also known as the Festival of Tabernacles. Following the more serious High Holidays of Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, Sukkot is celebrated on the 15th day of […]
BY LAURA ENG laura.eng59@aol.com Outdoor Mass at Cabrini Park With the sun dipping over Buttermilk Channel to the west, Sacred Hearts of Jesus and Mary/St. Stephen Parish celebrat- ed their patronal feast, the Feast of the Sacred Heart of Jesus, at an outdoor Mass at Cabrini Park on the evening of Friday, June 8th. Approximately 100 parishioners and neighbors gathered […]
Lent, a solemn period on the Christian liturgical calendar, begins on February 14 and lasts for 40 days, not including Sundays, from Ash Wednesday to Easter. The ashes which are distributed on Ash Wednesday come from the previous year’s Palm Sunday palms which are burned and mixed with holy oil or water. During Ash Wednesday services, the “imposition of […]
Red Hook resident Leroy Branch is a lay deacon of the Catholic Church, assigned to the Parish of St. Paul and St. Agnes in Cobble Hill. If you’ve ever attended a Mass with Deacon Leroy on the altar, either proclaiming the gospel, reading the Prayer of the Faithful or announcing “The Mass is ended, go in peace” in his booming […]
How the Diocese of Brooklyn Observes Holy Week Christians all over the world will mark the beginning of Holy Week on Palm Sunday, April 9. Palm Sunday, also known as Passion Sunday, commemorates Jesus’ entry into Jerusalem. The distribution and waving of palms is symbolic of Jesus’ impending victory over death. Palms placed on graves during the Easter season further […]
According to Diana Ortiz, a long-time Red Hook resident and active volunteer with Visitation Church, Father Claudio Antecini announced on Sunday, January 29 that the archdiocese had given him a second six-year assignment at the Red Hook church. However, a group of unhappy parishioners tells a different story. “I haven’t heard if he was offered another six years,” explained Michael […]
On January 27, after a week in office, President Donald Trump signed an executive order placing an immediate 90-day travel ban on people entering the United States from the largely Muslim countries of Iran, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Syria, Sudan, and Yemen. The order also called for a 120-day ban on all refugee programs and closed the door indefinitely on refugees […]
Bishop Neil Tiedemann, C.P., Brooklyn native and former pastor of Visitation BVM Church, has returned to the Diocese of Brooklyn. Following his term as pastor of Visitation from 1998 to 2005, Father Tiedemann was ordained a bishop in 2008 and named Bishop of Mandeville in Jamaica, W.I. by Pope Benedict XVI. Bishop Tiedemann resided in Mandeville until last year when […]
Mary Dudine Kyle, a co-owner of Dry Dock on Van Brunt Street, knows that the holiday lights in Red Hook are special. “When you’re driving back from someplace else that’s really stupid, and you’re sitting at a cocktail party talking to people that you just have to, and all of a sudden, you come to the top of Van Brunt […]
In a large Catholic church located on Verona Street, on the corner of Coffey Park, a massive fresco of the crucifixion overlooks the altar with commanding presence. The 1898 fresco, a painting method done with watercolors on wet plaster, acts as a eye-catching focal point in the large gothic revival-style church. Last year, if you would have entered Visitation of […]