Every year I've lived in Cobble Hill/Carroll Gardens, I've seen signs for the local Good Friday procession, but never bothered to investigate.
Apparently, my neighborhood boasts Brooklyn's (and Long Island's) oldest Italian Catholic Parish (in addition to having it's oldest Synagogue). According to the church, around 1900 this area boasted the "largest single concentration of Italians in the country."
The parish initially had space in the former church right across Warren Street from me (now condos). In 1885, they built their own church at President & Van Brunt, and Mother Cabrini (the namesake of Chicago's infamous Cabrini Green projects... near which I also used to live) opened a school there. The building was slated to be torn down by Robert Moses for the BQE, and the last mass was said there on December 7, 1941. God immediately punished the country later that morning, via the tragedy of the Pearl Harbor attack.
Undeterred, Moses still tore down the church.
The parish now lives in the massive church at Summit & Hicks... immediately adjacent to a pedestrian bridge over the BQE trench.
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