Annual parade canceled due to storm, but Mass brings faithful together
Frank and Madeline LoRe, visiting New York from Florida for Columbus Day celebrations, were among an estimated 1,000 people who attended this year's Columbus Day Mass at St. Patrick's Cathedral. Cardinal Timothy Dolan led the 48th annual Mass.
"It was fabulous, beautiful; it always is. We've been coming to this Mass for years," Frank told The Good Newsroom after the Monday, October 13, liturgy. "I was an assistant running the (Columbus Day) parade for years, but now we live in Florida." He said they appreciated the homily message about the strong faith and hard work of Italian immigrants since the early years. "My grandfather came here in 1902," Frank noted.
"He (the cardinal) always has very beautiful things to say," Madeline said of Cardinal Dolan's homilies. The LoRes are parishioners of Ascension Church in Boca Raton, Florida. They remain members of the Columbus Citizens Foundation, which organizes the annual Columbus Day Parade in Manhattan.
They said they were disappointed that this year's parade had to be canceled due to stormy weather, but they were glad the Mass was celebrated as scheduled. The morning liturgy was celebrated in English and Italian. Frank is second vice president of UNICO National, described as the largest Italian-American service organization in the United States, based in Fairfield, New Jersey.
'Viva Italia! Thank God for the Faith'
Cardinal Dolan, in welcoming remarks, said, "Our numbers might not be as great as usual, because of the rain, but how good you are, how good you are to be here." He said the people at the Mass were filled with faith, "the faith that inspired Christopher Columbus; the faith that animates the culture and the people of Italy."
He prayed, "Oh, Lord, to whom no one is a stranger…Look with compassion as we the children of immigrants and refugees praise you for our faith…Give us a kind heart for the needy and for strangers, through our Lord, Jesus Christ, your Son."
Later during the homily, the cardinal said, "The parade sadly might be canceled, but the Mass goes on, the Mass goes on as it has ever since, my brothers and sisters, ever since Jesus told us at his Last Supper, on the night before he died, 'Do this in memory of me.' And we have."
"You keep in mind, it was the first act of Columbus, upon his arrival in the discovered New World, to plant a cross of Christ, and to ask the chaplains to offer a Mass of Thanksgiving," Cardinal Dolan said, also citing historians' reports that many Italian immigrants attended Mass before boarding ships headed to New York, ships that passed the Statue of Liberty.
"And not just to keep it but to pass it on, to pass it on to their children," he said of early Italian immigrants committed to their Catholic faith. "Your company, here in this cathedral on Columbus Day, shows that they kept their vow, as you, your children, and grandchildren still cling to that faith…Yes, on Columbus Day, we rejoice never forgetting the faith, the faith arising from that Land called Holy, where peace may finally be a mirror to a reality."
At the end of Mass, the cardinal said, "Again, it's good to be with you. Grazie." And he rendered the final blessing with a small cross that contained relics of Mother Cabrini, Italian-American patron saint of immigrants. "il Padre, il Figlio e lo Spirito Santo. Amen."
The Mass concelebrants, acknowledged by the cardinal, included Church leaders from the New York area, and Archbishop Gabriele Giordano Caccia, permanent observer of the Holy See to the United Nations. Also acknowledged were Mass attendees who would have been principal participants of the parade. Toward the end of Mass, Luciano Lamonarca, Italian tenor, sang "Ave Maria" and "The Song of Saint Pio," greeted with thankful applause from the faithful.
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