Remembering Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor

Statue of Carlo V sculpted by Vincenzo Gemito on the western facade
of the Royal Palace in the Largo del Palazzo Reale in Naples

In memory of Holy Roman Emperor Charles V (24 February 1500 – 21 September 1558), Carlo IV of Naples and Carlo V of Sicily, we pray for the happy repose of his soul.

Eternal rest grant unto His Imperial Majesty, O Lord and let perpetual light shine upon him. May his soul, and the souls of all the faithful departed, through the mercy of God, rest in peace. Amen

A Century of Faith: The 100th Feast of San Gennaro

A newly donated relic of San Gennaro, containing a fragment of the saint’s skull, presented by the City of Naples in honor of the 100th Anniversary of the Feast of San Gennaro in Little Italy, New York City

For a century, the beloved Feast of San Gennaro has brought faith, tradition, and devotion to the streets of old Little Italy in New York City.

This year’s centennial celebration was made especially memorable by a newly donated relic of San Gennaro from the City of Naples, a beautifully restored painting of the saint originally from Naples, and a newly designed prayer card commemorating the 100th anniversary.

The procession through the throng gathered on Mulberry Street offered a stirring reminder of the enduring ties between Naples and New York’s Neapolitan American community.

Viva San Gennaro!

The processional bust of San Gennaro outside the Shrine Church of Most Precious Blood, with the relic and Constantinian Cross bestowed by H.R.H. Prince Carlo di Borbone, Duke of Castro

H.E. Gr. Uff. John Viola with the antique painting of San Gennaro from Naples that he rescued and had restored

Msgr. Jamie Gigantiello blessing the restored painting during Mass

The Mass was concelebrated by Msgr. Donald Sakano,
Msgr. Jamie Gigantiello, and Fr. Leo Camurati

Members of the Sacred Military Constantinian Order
of St. George participating in the Mass

Knights and Dames of the Sacred Military Constantinian Order
of St. George process out of the church following Mass

The statue of San Gennaro carried in procession through the throng

Fr. Leo among the crowd on Mulberry Street

Don Raimondo del Balzo dei Duchi di Presenzano
spotted in the crowd on Mulberry Street

Our friend Tony Mangia was among the revelers 

Msgr. Jamie Gigantiello leads the procession through the streets of Little Italy

The new outdoor shrine to San Gennaro on Mulberry Street

A delicious fil-a-bun burger

Zeppole

After the procession, we made our way to Vincent’s, a Little Italy institution since 1904, for a well-earned meal and the perfect way to continue celebrating the 100th Anniversary of the Feast of San Gennaro. Good food, good company, and a century of tradition on Mulberry Street.

Vincent’s, founded in 1904 and the oldest restaurant in Little Italy, marks two historic milestones with a new T-shirt celebrating the 250th anniversary of these United States and the 100th Anniversary of the Feast of San Gennaro

Fried shrimp

Baked clams

Calamari

Lasagna

(L) A surprise gift, a Mighty Warriors challenge coin. (R) The newly designed prayer card commemorating the 100th Anniversary of the Feast of San Gennaro

Feast of St. Wenceslaus at the Shrine Chapel of the Blessed Sacrament in Raritan, New Jersey

Photo of the Week: Artemis (Diana) of Ephesus, Vatican Museums (II)

Photo by New York Scugnizzo

Solemn First Vespers at the Church of St. Margaret of Cortona in the Bronx, New York

A Refuge from the Modern World

San Gennaro, ora pro nobis

For some time now, I have made a deliberate effort to withdraw, as much as circumstances permit, from the relentless negativity of modern life. Not from the world itself, nor from my duties within it, but from the noise that increasingly surrounds it: outrage, vulgarity, triviality, endless argument, and a constant invitation to despair. The effect on my peace of mind has been profound.

I have tried instead to turn my attention to what endures: God, faith, family, literature, art, beauty, and the cultivation of a life shaped by something higher than appetite and distraction. I pray more. I read more. I spend more time with the people I love. I seek out beautiful churches, paintings, music, books, architecture, landscapes, and those small rituals that give dignity and order to ordinary life.

None of this has made me unaware of what is happening around me. If anything, the contrast has become sharper.

Much of modern society seems engaged in a sustained assault on what our ancestors understood as true, noble, and beautiful. Transcendence has been replaced by consumption, contemplation by distraction, and inheritance by novelty. We have surrounded ourselves with comforts while becoming restless, anxious, and spiritually impoverished.

Though I cannot reverse the direction of an age, I can refuse to let its disorder become my own. The world may continue along its chosen course, but I do not have to follow it. Again, this does not mean pretending the darkness does not exist. It means refusing to let it extinguish the light by which I live. There are still Masses to attend, books to read, paintings to admire, meals to share, prayers to say, people to love, and beautiful things worth preserving.

Wishing you a joyful Feast of San Gennaro!

~ By Giovanni di Napoli, September 18th, Feast of San Sabino 

31st Annual Pilgrimage for Restoration in Auriesville, New York

Look What I Found in Little Italy!

Check out these cool patches I found at the Italian American Emporium in Little Italy, New York!

One is a clever play on the classic New York Cosmos logo that reads “Calabrese,” while the other commemorates the 100th Anniversary of the Feast of San Gennaro.

If you’re heading to the Feast, be sure to stop by the Italian American Emporium and see what treasures you can find!

Italian American Emporium/Red Sauce Studio
155 Mulberry Street
New York, NY 10013

Il Portastendardo di Civitella del Tronto (n. 63 - Settembre 2026)

Identità Borbonica

In Napoli

Excerpt from Naples, A Traveller’s Reader, Edited and Introduced by Desmond Seward

"The Risorgimento was a disaster for Naples and for the south in general. Before 1860 the Mezzogiorno was the richest part of Italy outside the Austrian Empire; after it quickly became the poorest. The facts speak for themselves. In 1859 money circulating in The Two Sicilies amounted to more than that circulating in all other independent Italian states, while the Bank of Naples's gold reserve was 443 million gold lire, twice the combined reserves of the rest of Italy. This gold was immediately confiscated by Piedmont - whose own reserve had been a mere 27 million - and transferred to Turin. Neapolitan excise duties, levied to keep out the north's inferior goods and providing four-fifths of the city's revenue, were abolished. And then the northerners imposed crushing new taxes. Far from being liberators, the Piedmontese administrators who came in the wake of the Risorgimento behaved like Yankees in the post-bellum Southern States; they ruled The Two Sicilies as an occupied country, systematically demolishing its institutions and industries. Ferdinand's new dockyard was dismantled to stop Naples competing with Genoa (it is now being restored by industrial archaeologists). Vilification of the Borboni became part of the school curriculum. Shortly after the Two Sicilies' enforced incorporation into the new Kingdom of Italy, the Duke of Maddaloni protested in the 'national' Parliament: 'This is invasion, not annexation, not union. We are being plundered like an occupied territory.' For years after the 'liberation', Neapolitans were governed by northern padroni and carpet-baggers. And today the Italians of the north can be as stupidly prejudiced about Naples as any Anglo-Saxon, affecting a superiority that verges on racism – 'Africa begins South of Rome' – and lamenting the presence in the north of so many workers from the Mezzogiorno. (The ill-feeling is reciprocated, the Neapolitan translation of SPQR being Sono porci, questi Romani.) Throughout the 1860s 150,000 troops were needed to hold down the south."

* Naples, A Traveller’s Reader, edited and introduced by Desmond Seward (Robinson, 1984), pp. 13–14

Our Lady of the Rosary of San Nicolas

Remembering the Warrior Prelate: His Eminence Cardinal Fabrizio Dionigi Ruffo

Cardinal Fabrizio Ruffo (b. Sept. 16, 1744—d. Dec. 13, 1827)

In memory of His Eminence Cardinal Fabrizio Dionigi Ruffo, the great counter-revolutionary hero who liberated the Kingdom of Naples from Franco-Jacobin tyranny, we offer our prayers for the happy repose of his soul.

Eternal rest grant unto him, O Lord, and let perpetual light shine upon him. May his soul, and the souls of all the faithful departed, through the mercy of God, rest in peace. Amen

Chants of St. Hildegard of Bingen: A Musical Meditation at St. Josaphat's Oratory in Bayside, New York

The Island of the Dead

Island of the Dead, 1880, oil on wood, Arnold Böcklin

“You will be mourned by myself, and others you will mourn, and by your presence, you will signal grief.”  — Ovid, Metamorphoses, Book X

Whenever I visit Arnold Böcklin’s Island of the Dead at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, I find myself completely absorbed by it. There is something strangely irresistible about the painting that makes it difficult to glance at and simply move on. The longer I stand before it, the more the surrounding gallery seems to recede, leaving me at the water’s edge, watching the funeral barge make its solemn approach.

A tiny, desolate island rises abruptly from dark, glassy waters, its pale cliffs enclosing a dense grove of towering cypress trees, symbols of death and mourning since antiquity.

In Ovid’s Metamorphoses, the young Cyparissus, inconsolable after accidentally killing his beloved stag, begs the gods to allow him to mourn forever. Transformed into a cypress tree, the youth is destined to stand wherever others grieve.

Böcklin’s cypresses stand almost like a wall, concealing whatever lies at the island’s heart. Tomb-like openings have been hewn into the rock itself, as though the whole island were an immense sepulchre.

Across the still water, a small boat approaches the narrow inlet, guided by a solitary oarsman. Before him stands a mysterious figure shrouded in white, beside a festooned coffin. We do not know who has died, who accompanies the dead, or what awaits them within.

Perhaps this is why Island of the Dead remains so haunting. Böcklin does not attempt to show us what lies beyond death. He brings us only to its entrance and leaves us there, watching the ferry disappear beneath the cypresses.

~ By Giovanni di Napoli, September 14th, Feast of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross 

48th Annual Procession in Honor of Santa Fortunata at the Shrine Church of St. Bernadette in Brooklyn, NY

Seventeenth Sunday After Pentecost at St. Michael's Church in Staten Island, New York

Babylon Berlin: Something Worth Watching, Eventually

A friend recently informed me, much to my delight, that the fifth and final season of Babylon Berlin was premiering this September. At last, I thought, something new worth watching.

My excitement lasted about as long as it took me to look it up. Turns out, the German premiere was September 10th. Apparently, here in the United States, we will have to wait until early 2027 to see it.

At a time when seemingly endless quantities of forgettable television are being churned out with remarkable efficiency, one of the few series I actually look forward to remains (for now) out of reach.

Not without its flaws, Babylon Berlin still has plenty that so much contemporary television lacks: atmosphere, style, intrigue, memorable characters, and the death knell of Weimar Berlin as its historical backdrop.

So, while Germany gets to return to the smoky cabarets, brothels, political conspiracies, criminal underworld, and a city standing on the threshold of catastrophe, I suppose I will spend the next several months doing what I usually do: watching old movies and wondering how, with more streaming content available than ever before, there can be so little worth watching.

~ By Giovanni di Napoli

Photo of the Week: Artemis (Diana) of Ephesus, Vatican Museums (I)

Photo by New York Scugnizzo

Feast of the Madonna Addolorata in Brooklyn, NY

Remembering Maria Isabella of Spain, Queen of the Two Sicilies

6 July, 1789 — 13 September, 1848

In memory of Maria Isabella of Spain, Queen of the Two Sicilies, we pray for the happy repose of her soul. Viva ‘a Reggina!

Eternal rest grant unto Her Majesty, O Lord and let perpetual light shine upon her. May her soul, and the souls of all the faithful departed, through the mercy of God, rest in peace. Amen.

More Postcards from Napoli (Part 02)

A few more photographs from my friend’s travels through Napoli and its surroundings, completing the latest batch he was kind enough to send our way.

Each new collection makes me a little more excited for my own return to the capitale this November. Until then, I am quite happy to keep receiving these little postcards from afar.

~ By Giovanni di Napoli, September 12th, Feast of the Madonna di Montevergine