Historic St. Brigid Church holds Stations of Cross Service Across East Village on Good Friday
St. Brigid’s was saved from the wreckers ball in 2007 and 08 after an annonymous donor stepped in with a $20 million endowment. It is holding a Good Friday stations of the cross procession, moving from its church on E. 8th St. and Ave. B to the parish of the Most Holy Redeemer also in the East Village on E. 3rd St.
| 03 Apr 2023 | 09:56
St. Brigid’s Church, which opened in 1849 and nearly closed in 2007 after the Archdiocese of New York sought to sell it to a developer due to declining parishioners, is holding a Good Friday, stations of the cross procession to the Most Holy Redeemer Church, also in the East Village. Photo: Keith J. Kelly
The church of St. Brigid on East 8th Street and Avenue B, which was build by Irish immigrants in 1849 and saved from a wreckers ball in 2007 and ‘08, will hold an outdoor reenactment of the Stations of the Cross on Good Friday April 7th.
The first of the 12 stations will be marked inside the church and then will proceed outdoors through the East Village to a sister parish of the Most Holy Redeemer-Nativity at 173 East Third Street.
In accordance with church tradition, no Mass will be celebrated on Good Friday, which Christians mark as the day Christ died on the cross. But communion wafers that were consecrated on Holy Thursday–historically marking the day when Jesus and eleven of his 12 disciples celebrated Passover–will be distributed at a service that begins at 2 pm on April 7.
It will be followed by a procession of the image of El Senor de los Milagros and the remaining nine stations of the cross which recreates Jesus carrying the cross enroute to his crucifixion.
Before the secret benefactor materialized with the $20 million, the Archdiocese of New York had intended to sell the building to a developer.
There was elementary school that was affiliated with the school that opened in 1856, but it was closed by the Archdiocese at the end of the 2018-19 academic year as part of a round of closures that year. Technically, St. Brigid’s parish is a merger of another Lower East Side parish, St. Emerick, which was on Avenue C.