The yearly application process to march in the parade is traditionally held at Blessed Sacrament R.C. Church, which is located along the parade route on Forest Avenue in West Brighton.
Typically, organizations will drop off applications inside the church.
But that won’t be happening this year, said Bishop Peter Byrne.
“I am not supporting the parade, therefore the facilities here will not be available. Sorry, but I have no further comment,” he told the Advance/SILive.com.
The new leadership of the Richmond County St. Patrick’s Day Parade Committee didn’t respond to a request for comment about Bishop Byrne’s statement, or where the sign-up event, usually held in February, will take place for the 2025 parade.
Staten Island’s first inclusive St. Patrick’s Parade
Ed Patterson, the new chairman of the parade committee, said at a Nov. 13 press conference that the decision to lift the marching ban was made “quite simply” because, “it’s just time.”
“The Pride Center has long asserted that they merely wish to be treated like any other marching contingent in the parade. The parade committee is entrusted with ensuring that the fullness of the parade remained upon St. Patrick, the history, culture, traditions and faith of the Irish people. The Pride Center has indicated that they are willing to assist the parade committee and remain faithful to that obligation,” he said at the event.
On March 2, 2025, members of the Pride Center of Staten Island and other LGBTQ+ groups will march under their own banners alongside dozens of community organizations, officially bringing an end to the exclusionary ban at Staten Island’s largest annual public event.
The Staten Island parade was believed to be the last in the world to ban LGBTQ+ groups after similar parades in Manhattan and Boston had ended the exclusionary practice.
The parade committee’s “change in mindset” was made possible by new leadership, who were installed on Oct. 30 following the retirement and resignation of former leaders, who had long pointed to the Catholic nature of the annual event as justification for LGBTQ+ exclusion.
“There was ... a desire for, quite frankly, the controversy to go away,” Patterson said, repeatedly stating that the group did not wish to dwell on the decisions of past leaders.
The move also comes after an advocacy project launched in 2022 by the Advance/SILive.com highlighted the LGBTQ+ exclusion by parade organizers through a series of stories that explored the large amount of city resources used to support the event, as well as the overwhelming support from the community of the Pride Center of Staten Island.
How did we get here?
For at least the first 55 years of the Island’s traditional St. Patrick’s Parade, hoards of residents from all corners of the borough would flock to a strip of Forest Avenue hours before the start of the parade to create a sea of green as they eagerly awaited the hundreds of marchers, which ranged from a host of high school bands and Miss Staten Island, to all of Staten Island’s elected officials, including the mayor of New York.
But over the last four years, the number of organizations marching in the parade has dwindled. In fact, many groups and individuals boycotted the annual event due to the parade committee’s continued exclusion of LGBTQ+ groups.
In 2023, organizers of the annual Jerome X. O’Donovan Parade Breakfast, where local politicians gather ahead of the parade, cancelled the 25-year-old tradition over the St. Patrick’s Parade Committee’s longstanding refusal to allow members of the LGBTQ+ community to openly march in the parade.
That year, a group of individuals who supported inclusion staged a brief, peaceful protest before the parade kicked off, displaying a large pride banner in the middle of Forest Avenue in front of Jody’s Club Forest.
Despite this, the parade committee, under its former leadership, again banned LGBTQ+ groups from participating in the 2024 event.
Frustrated with the exclusionary practices of the parade committee, the Forest Avenue Business Improvement District this year orchestrated the borough’s first inclusive parade held on St. Patrick’s Day, March 17.
The inclusive parade included a host of marchers — from politicians and celebrities, to public high school marching bands — who had boycotted the annual parade in recent years due to exclusion of LGBTQ+ groups. And the annual political breakfast was instead held on the morning of the inclusive parade.