A recent article in The Wall Street Journal focused on the renewal that a Manhattan parish is experiencing, thanks to a new generation of immigrants.

“A mariachi band replaced the usual lone cantor. Bright strings of lights and dozens of red and yellow roses adorned a statue on the altar. It was the Virgin of Guadalupe,” wrote the article’s author, Carine Hajjar. 

Saint Brigid-Saint Emeric’s Parish, in the East Village, was founded as two separate parishes in the 1840s, by Irish and Hungarian immigrants, respectively. Now it is primarily more recent arrivals from Latin America that fill the pews.

“The congregation is predominantly Puerto Rican and Dominican with substantial Peruvian and Mexican communities,” Hajjar wrote.

Father Seán Connolly, the parish’s administrator, has been adapting to meet his parishioners’ demands. 

“Born in northern Westchester County, [Connolly] had to take weekly Spanish classes during his five years at Saint Joseph’s Seminary in Yonkers, mandated by Cardinal Timothy Dolan, archbishop of New York, to accommodate the diocese’s growing Hispanic population,” Hajjar wrote.

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