Church of Our Lady of Mt. Carmel

The Church of Our Lady of Mount Carmel is a Roman Catholic parish church under the authority of the Archdiocese of New York, located at East Harlem, Manhattan, New York City, United States. The parish enshrines a vested statue of the Blessed Virgin Mary under the title of Our Lady of Mount Carmel widely venerated by its devotees. Pope Leo XIII issued a Papal bull granting the image a Canonical Coronation on 12 May 1903. Pope Pius X carried over the Pontifical decree and donated a gemstone for the crown to which the ceremony occurred on 10 July 1904. It is one of the four canonically crowned images authorised by the Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments in the United States of America.HistoryOur Lady of Mount Carmel was the second Italian parish in New York City and the first Southern Italian parish. The first Italian parish is St. Anthony of Padua on Sullivan St., founded in 1859 and officially incorporated in 1866 when the neighborhood had a large Northern Italian population. Since the first feast of Our Lady of Mt. Carmel on 16 July 1881, its annual feast has been a major event in East Harlem, at one time attended by more than 100,000. The church cornerstone was laid on September 20, 1884. A new school and gymnasium were added to the church on September 1, 1965.