“Hope is the message that Mary’s Assumption brings us,” Bishop Edmund Whalen said on Sunday, August 19, ahead of a Marian procession organized by the clergy and parishioners of St. Joseph of the Holy Family in West Harlem.

Archdiocese of New York Auxiliary Bishop Whalen, vicar for clergy, and the concelebrants wore light blue vestments – the color of the Blessed Mother – for the 90-minute, French-language Mass, attended by hundreds of members of the francophone West African community, namely from Burkina Faso, Gabon, Cameroon, and Niger.

“Hope. With all the difficulties of the world. With all the political difficulties, violence, family problems, and future worries about the economy, we celebrate hope with the Virgin Mary,” Bishop Whalen said in his homily.

The celebration of the Solemnity of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary, observed on August 15, is the realization of the hope that Mary represents.

“Mary, in all of the realities of life on earth, shows us the certainty of the possibility of living with God,” Bishop Whalen said.

Concelebrants included Father Joseph Kinda, St. Joseph of the Holy Family’s pastor.

Following Mass, hundreds of parishioners, many clad in traditional dress or blue garments, processed with an image of the Blessed Mother from the church around the West Harlem neighborhood, stopping at several points to recite decades of the Rosary. The procession takes place annually on the Sunday following the observance of the Assumption on August 15. 

St. Joseph of the Holy Family was established in 1860 by German Catholics. It offers two English Masses, including a children’s Mass, a Spanish Mass, and a French Mass every Sunday, along with a Saturday vigil Mass in English.