Washington, D.C. Newsroom, Sep 19, 2025 / 18:20 pm (CNA).
St. Patrick’s Cathedral in Manhattan has unveiled a 25-foot-tall mural honoring migrants to New York City.
Housed in the entryway of the iconic New York church, the mural, “What’s So Funny About Peace, Love, and Understanding,” portrays the apparition of Mary, Joseph, and St. John the Evangelist to the Irish village of Knock as well as immigrants from all over the world, including well-known figures such as Dorothy Day, Pierre Toussaint, and Alfred E. Smith.
The mural also shows the first Native American saint, Kateri Tekakwitha.
Cardinal Timothy Dolan, who is set to bless the mural this coming Sunday, said at a press briefing on Thursday: “This became not only an ode to Jesus and Mary and Joseph and St. John and the faith of the Irish people who were so instrumental in this archdiocese, it also became an ode to those who followed them and found in this city, this country, and yes, in this Holy Mother Church, an embrace of welcome.”
Dolan, who will be joined for the official dedication by the rector of the Knock Shrine in Ireland, said he had intended the mural to go up with the last renovations at St. Patrick’s in 2012 but was advised to wait.
“I’m kind of glad now, because it matured — it was like a Crock-Pot,” he said.
Adam Cvijanovic, the mural’s painter, said: “I thought when I started making this painting that the important thing to do was to make it about people and portraits. So, everybody in this painting is an actual person. They’re all portraits. Even the angels.”
Dolan’s late mother, Shirley, was the model for one of the immigrants Cvijanovic portrayed. First responders are also depicted in the mural.
“That seemed to me to be a really, really important thing to do,” Cvijanovic continued, “to talk about the people of the city, all of them, and to have it in some place that people could go in New York and feel themselves recognized in the context of respect and hope.”
Major benefactors covered the cost of the mural, according to Dolan.
The cathedral’s rector, Father Enrique Salvo, an immigrant from Nicaragua, weighed in on the mural, saying: “If you would have told me that I was going to be the rector of St. Patrick’s Cathedral when I came to this country, I would have never believed it. But with God, all things are possible, and hopefully it’s an inspiration for everyone that walks in, that we’re not only welcome, but we’re also invited to make a difference and to let God shine through us.”
If you value the news and views Catholic World Report provides, please consider donating to support our efforts. Your contribution will help us continue to make CWR available to all readers worldwide for free, without a subscription. Thank you for your generosity!
Click here for more information on donating to CWR. Click here to sign up for our newsletter.
Migrants – they arrive with joy and enthusiasm to be collaborators with their distinguished hosts, to toil together as co-workers in the holy project of world rebuilding.
Wrong. They arrive with no skills, no education, and no money. They take far more than they contribute. Deportation is the most appropriate response. Let them build their home nations.
You just described my 2x’s great grandparents, Athanasius.
🙂
This type of monument civic mural done in a contemporary “heroic art” style, in my opinion, is not appropriate for a Catholic cathedral, which is dedicated to the worship of God, not to a celebration of the individual worshippers. City Hall or another public building would be a better place for it. Thematically, it is a jumble, where the artist seems to have thrown in whatever the customer wanted. (St. Kateri Tekakwitha was definitely NOT an immigrant).
Meanwhile, at the Vatican itself, see how it protects ITS own territory from the illegal aliens invasion:
Vatican Promises Stiff Penalties for Illegal Aliens Crossing its Border
https://www.breitbart.com/europe/2025/01/16/vatican-promises-stiff-penalties-for-illegal-aliens-crossing-its-border/
Mary E. is right about an appropriate setting for such a mural.
Mary E. is also right about St. Kateri. St. Kateri emigrated from upstate New York to Montreal. Her inclusion in the migrant mural alludes to an exodus OUT of the U.S…..A larger exodus may well follow a ZonoMomdaddy sort of election win.
Sadly today refugeeing from NYC to Montreal would be like jumping from the frying pan into the fire.
There’s some pretty crazy stuff going on north of the border.
Its a beautiful work of art, more than worthy of a public venue, but given the contemporary global crisis of migration across many nations this has become something of a disingenuous political statement. There is absolutely no equivalence between the migration before, lets say pre-last mid-century and what has occurred since. Every trip I have made to Europe since 1973 has included a discussion initiated by a local complaining about migration crisis — Paris, Rome, Amsterdam… and Islam has most often been seen for decades as a central threat to civil order.
Development of the Third World is an imperative. The Church could have contributed to that development, but since the “new springtime” of Vatican II and the “new evangelization” of John Paul there has been a precipitous evaporation of vocations, let alone any other Catholic practice.
For all the talk and art work, there is no springtime or evangelization. Perhaps we had better address the absence of authentic catechesis in the first world before we start importing a population which we cannot support.