PRAY TO SAN GENNARO – MOST PRECIOUS BLOOD CHURCH IS CLOSING

Little Italy, Manhattan, December 2014 -  All the prayers of the faithful may not help this time as the church of the patron saint of the annual San Gennaro feast in Manhattan ’s Little Italy is closing its doors and will be merged with the original St Patrick’s Old Cathedral at 263 Mulberry Street, several blocks to the north. The move is a byproduct of the regional consolidation being done by the Catholic Church to conserve resources in part by low attendance in churches and low priest availability. The absorption plan was disclosed by the New York Diocese on November 2nd by Cardinal Dolan but only now are the details emerging.

 

Of the 80 parishes in Manhattan , 29 of them are south of 14^th Street – a veritable glut of empty churches on Sundays considering the old constituency just isn’t there anymore. At the turn of the 20th Century, a little less than 2 million lived in this part of Manhattan – a great number were immigrants. The churches were crowded then and the focal point of religious life.

However, the old crowd returns for events but the pews remain empty at other times. This is a church where generations of parishioners were baptized, received first communion and got married. Now all that remains to be had is a funeral mass, this time for the closure of the church.

As you could imagine, the San Gennaro congregation isn’t happy with this development.

The church opened its doors in the 1880s and was a focal point of Italian immigrants taking up residence in the area.

This development is further evidence of the shrinking of Manhattan ’s Little Italy in recent years.

Plaque Honoring the Heroic Police Officer, Lt. Joseph Petrosino Unveiled At Park Bearing His Name

Little Italy, NYC, November 5, 2014 - At Noon today, NYPD and NYC Parks officials dedicated a bronze markers honoring heroic police officer

The Lt. Joseph Petrosino Square which is located at the triangle of Kenmare Sttreet, Lafayette Street and Cleveland Place in Manhattan's Little Italy is where the unveiling took place. The park named in his honor is located just north of the Renaissance Revival edifice at 240 Centre Street, which served as Police Headquarters from 1910 to 1971.

Background on Lt. Detective Petrosino
Lt. Detective Giuseppe (Joseph) Petrosino was born in Salerno, Italy, and immigrated to the United States with his family in 1873. As a boy, he shined shoes outside Police Headquarters on Mulberry Street. At the age of eighteen, he began his career in the public service with the Department of Sanitation (then under the jurisdiction of the Police Department). Fluent in many Italian dialects, Petrosino aided the police by working undercover as an informer in Little Italy.


Petrosino joined the Police Department in 1883 and in 1895 Police Commissioner Theodore Roosevelt personally promoted him to Sergeant of Detectives. While investigating anarchists in the United States , Petrosino warned President McKinley of
threats against his life; however, the warning was not heeded and the President was assassinated in 1901.

Within ten years, Petrosino was named lieutenant and given command of the new Italian Squad, a unit created to combat the crime organization known as the Black Hand (La Mana Nera). Under his leadership, several thousand arrests were made, and more than 500 offenders were sent to prison. Crimes against Italian-Americans dropped by fifty percent. Petrosino was killed while on assignment to Palermo, Sicily in 1909.

When his body was returned to New York, thousands of mourners formed a funeral procession which marched from Little Italy to Calvary Cemetery in Queens. Lt. Petrosino was the only New York police officer who had died in the line of duty outside the United States.

Lt. Det. Joseph Petrosino. The project was been sponsored by the Columbia Association of the NYPD and the Lt. Joseph Petrosino Association of America, Inc., in collaboration with the Italian American Museum and the New York City Parks' division of Art & Antiquities.

Photo captions for photos taken during the unveiling:
The moment the plaques were unveiled at Petrosino Park.
Photo with all the persons contributing to the plaque unveiling with the artist, descendants of Lt. Det. Petrosino, and officials of the Petrosino Association.