In Red Hook, in the south-western part of Brooklyn, one of the oldest parishes in the city is preparing for two appointments that will bring together faithful and guests from Italy and the United States. From November 6th to 8th the church of the Visitation of the Blessed Virgin Mary will host a religious congress with live music and the presentation of a book, while on November 14th an evening will be organized to celebrate the 172 years of the parish and the 65th birthday of Father Claudio Antecini, an Italian priest who guides it from 2012.
To organize the initiatives is the Koinonia Giovanni Battista, an international Catholic community founded in 1979 by the Argentine priest Ricardo Argañaraz, in a mountain resort of the province of Vicenza. Born around a small group of religious, in the years Koinonia has developed a network of communities in different countries, involving priests, consecrated persons and lay people in the activities of evangelization. His presence in Brooklyn is linked to the parish of the Visitation, entrusted to the religious of the community.
The first event, entitled Sigue a Jesús, will take place from Friday 6th to Sunday 8th November and will have among the protagonists Father Luca Arzenton, Italian priest and head of the Oasis of Biella della Koinonia Giovanni Battista. Arzenton is also known for his online religious dissemination activity, through which he has published daily comments on the Gospel texts for several years, reaching a public that goes beyond the parish communities.
From this activity was born Follow Jesus, a book published by Ignazio Pappalardo Editore that collects his comments to the Gospel of Mark. The volume, first of a series dedicated to the four Gospels, will be presented in Brooklyn in the new editions in English and Spanish, respectively Follow Jesus and Sigue in Jesús. The presentation will be held on Saturday, November 7th at 19, during an evening that will include live music, testimonies and moments of prayer.
The congress will see the participation of the band of Koinonia in Biella and will include meetings dedicated to religious reflection, healing prayer and worship. According to the organizers, Italian and American guests are expected, including artists, music producers and audiovisual professionals. The activities will take place mainly in English and Spanish, the two languages in which the New York community usually organizes a significant part of its initiatives.
The Brooklyn appointment will also be the first stage of the Follow Jesus Tour, the journey that will bring Father Luca and the musicians of Koinonia to different American locations. On November 9, a meeting was held at Our Lady of Perpetual Help Catholic Academy in Queens, followed the next day by a stop in Bridgeport, Connecticut. The tour will end on November 14 at Eagle Pass, Texas, with a musical event aimed at the local community.
A week after the congress, Saturday, November 14, the Visitation will host the Gala 65, an organized dinner for the 65th birthday of Father Claudio Antecini and for his 31 years of ministry. The celebration will coincide with the 172th anniversary of the foundation of the parish, born in 1854 to meet the religious needs of Irish, Italian and German immigrants working in shipyards, warehouses and factories in Red Hook.
The story of the Visitation is linked to that of the neighborhood. The first church was inaugurated in 1855, when Red Hook was one of the main centers of the port activities of Brooklyn. The increase in the population led to the construction of a larger building in 1878, but destroyed by a fire in 1896. The community rebuilt the church not far away, at the corner of Richards Street and Verona Street, where it is still today. The current neo-Gothic building preserves a bell tower that for decades has been one of the visible references of the neighborhood.
The parish also went through difficult periods. At the beginning of the 2000s, with the demographic change and the decline of the harbour activities, the number of the faithful had reduced to a few tens and had come to hypothesize its closure. The arrival of Father Antecini in 2012 coincided with a new phase, marked above all by the involvement of the Latin American communities in the neighborhood. According to a reconstruction published in 2023 by the Catholic weekly The Tablet, in those years the parish had passed from about 80 to 300 members. At the same time, he had dealt with the damage caused by Hurricane Sandy and initiated important renovation of the building.
The gala of November will therefore bring together two occasions related to each other: the anniversary of a parish born to welcome European immigrants of the nineteenth century and the birthday of the priest who, over a century and a half later, accompanied the transformation into a community attended by faithful of different origins.
Both appointments will be held at the Visitation of the Blessed Virgin Mary Church, at 98 Richards Street, Brooklyn. The number (917) 515-4225 is available for information and registration at the congress on 6-8 November.
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