AP PHOTOS: Parishioners, pilgrims flock to Brooklyn festival

NEW YORK (AP) — By the thousands, revelers recently returned to Havemeyer Street in New York City’s Williamsburg neighborhood to celebrate the annual Giglio Feast following its first-ever cancellation in 2020, due to the COVID-19 pandemic, and then downsized crowds in 2021.

The feast, first held in Williamsburg in 1903 by immigrants from Nola, Italy, combines two celebrations.

One, typically held on June 22, is dedicated to St. Paulinus, the Bishop of Nola from 409 AD to 431 AD, and the other, celebrated on July 16, to Our Lady of Mount Carmel, the name given to the Virgin Mary by the Catholic Church’s Carmelite Order. While the feast used to span several weeks between the holidays, it has since been combined into one 12-day event.

Throughout the festivities, people from the Catholic church and the surrounding community walk the streets, savoring food from pop-up food stands and playing carnival games.

“I’ve always been mesmerized by the feast,” said Robert Mestrandrea. “As I grew older, the devotion to the Blessed Mother grew, as well as love for the feast.”

Mestrandrea, 20, has been an altar server at the Shrine Church of Our Lady of Mount Carmel for the past eight years.

The highlight of the feast is the lifting of the Giglio, an 80-foot, 4-ton tower crowned with a life-size St. Paulinus figurine. As 100 to 150 men struggle to walk with the Giglio on their shoulders, an older man takes the lead, clearing the way and waving a cane while shouting directions.

In 2019, the church, which has been in charge of the feast since the 1950s, put out a call for volunteer lifters for the first time, citing struggles with passing the tradition onto the next generation.

However, this year no such announcement was necessary, as more than enough volunteers came forward following...