“Today we will carry her, but every day she carries us,” Father Michael Barone.
A few days before Our Lady of Mount Carmel’s annual feast, there was some concern if the weather would hold. But at the start of Sunday’s mass, the last gray clouds were long gone — and this has happened many times before in the 135 years of the parish’s history.
“If the blessed mother wants it to happen, she’ll make it happen,” said Eric Lavin, a pastoral associate of the church.
This four-day feast happens each year, culminating tomorrow — July 16 — the date when an English Carmelite purportedly had a vision of the Blessed Mother. Our Lady of Mount Carmel Church, now on Oliver Street in Newark after moving from its original location near Penn Station, was founded in 1890. It was a time when Italians were just beginning to immigrate en masse to the United States, residing near the curve of the river in the Ironbound.
The last sight many of these immigrants had leaving the port in Naples was the tall tower of the Basilica of Saint Mary of Mount Carmel, Lavin said, so many Italian enclaves in this new land gave their parishes the same name in commemoration.
The mere fact that Mount Carmel church is still going strong, when so many other houses of worship have shuttered, is a testament to the congregation and their dedication to tradition.
“We still celebrate the feast the same way we did 135 years ago,” said Lavin, who began attending the Italian-language Mass with his grandmother as a child.
Lavin’s church is one of the six Italian-American churches that once stood in Newark. The only other one to survive the city’s tumultuous history of urban renewal and upheaval is St. Lucy’s in the North Ward.
“A lot of people have moved away, but the feast is one thing that brings us back together — no matter where we go, this is home,” said Anne Primerana, who counts the tithes and sings in the choir. “We always see somebody that we grew up with.”
One of the messages in Father Michael Barone’s homily last Sunday was preserving this tradition for the next generation. “We must do all within our power to encourage reverence for tradition in future generations,” he said.
Lavin admits that it has been difficult finding volunteers as many pillars of the church get older, some moving away. But Primerana believes that attendance this year was better than usual. During the mass, she said she counted the number of worshippers sitting in the pews, tallying more than 200.
The 135th anniversary was no doubt one of the reasons for the spike in attendance. Another reason could be the recent controversy surrounding the Mother Cabrini statue that lit a fire within many longstanding church members.
Last year, Councilman Michael Silva announced a plan to move the statue from a small park near Penn Station where Cabrini built a parochial school for the church.
Lavin told our publication at the time that he wanted the statue — which was sculpted by a well-known Italian named Francesco Miozzo — to remain where it was, because it commemorated the site of Cabrini’s former school. But if the statue had to be moved, he and other congregants wanted the statue returned to the church.
At a meeting last year, the church members begged Silva to bring the statue to their church. It stands in front of the church’s former grammar school, which closed in the 1980s.
“Sometimes people don’t come out for meetings, but they all came to the meeting with Michael Silva,” said Joan Pfiefer, who moved away from the Ironbound 43 years ago, but still returns every year for the feast.
At the end of Sunday’s Mass, the statue of La Madonna Bruna, as she is called, was hoisted onto a platform and carried outside to the street, where cannons fired confetti into the air and the band played Italian folk music. The procession, which wends along a path around Independence Park, can be quite a feat on a warm day, especially for those carrying the statue.
The route makes pitstops at the homes of longstanding church members who provide water and refreshments for the paradegoers. These stops symbolize a “place of respite for the weary pilgrim,” Lavin said. “That’s a testament that comes from scripture and Italian culture.”
One of the stops along the way was at the New York Avenue home of Lorraine Serratelli who began doing this in 2003 as a way to commemorate her mother who passed away that year. “Take something,” she said to a member of her church. “Take a clementine.”
Serratelli’s cousin, Arthur Serratelli, is a bishop in the Archdiocese of Paterson — a source of pride among the members of Our Lady of Mount Carmel.
“We’ve had three bishops that came out of Mount Carmel,” said Lorraine’s brother Daniel Serratelli, who sings in the choir with Pfiefer and Primerana.
The procession lasted about two hours and after a short break, Pfiefer, one of the oldest church members at age 88, was still volunteering, this time scooping ice cream at the Nasto’s stand. Asked if she was tired, Pfiefer shrugged and said, “We used to do a procession with 10 stops.”
WATCH THE PROCESSION
Father Michael Barone’s homily on July 13, 2025.
