First comes an Italian brass band pumping jaunty tunes into the warm air, then marchers with flags and banners, then the great statue of the Madonna.
Hundreds trail behind, holding candles that flicker in the dark.
Walk the length of the procession from front to back and look closely, however, and a more complex reality appears. But step past the Madonna, to the rear half of the procession, and most of the marchers are black people speaking French. In 1997 the festa of the Madonna of 115th Street, one of the grand rites of Roman Catholicism in New York, is sustained in large measure by Haitian immigrants, not by people who trace their ancestry to the province of Salerno. In some respects, the march is a metaphor for much of New York Catholicism in the latter years of the twentieth century. Although its outer form still betrays European origins, the interior is increasingly shaped by people of color.