“The city that never sleeps needs a chapel that never closes,” said Fr. Boniface Endorf, O.P., pastor of St. Joseph’s parish in New York City, now home to the first perpetual adoration chapel in Manhattan. Fr. Boniface’s tagline is fitting because it corresponds to this offering of all of time, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. Someone will always be in prayer before the Eucharistic Lord on this island of 1.6 million inhabitants.
When Fr. Boniface began his assignment as pastor in 2018, the Young Adult Office of the Archdiocese of New York reached out to him and said the Cardinal had been wanting a perpetual adoration chapel in Manhattan because there had never been one. “So that put the idea in my head,” he said, “and I started raising the money to build the space.”
Cardinal Dolan blessed the Divine Mercy Adoration Chapel this July, nearly five years after the initial idea was proposed.
The centerpiece of the chapel is a mosaic of the Divine Mercy image from which the chapel is named. There is also a 16th century statue of a Dominican saint, Catherine of Siena, gesturing with her right hand toward the Eucharist. “And at the center is the beautiful monstrance and the Eucharist itself. So, all of this beauty of the chapel draws you to Beauty itself.”
Fr. Boniface and his fellow Dominican friars hope this first ever perpetual adoration chapel in Manhattan will be a source of grace that will transform people’s lives. There’s so much suffering in the world and in New York City, so many people are so unhappy and they don’t know it doesn’t have to be that way. “They don’t know that there’s a God they can turn to who loves them. And that’s why it’s divine mercy. He’s just waiting for them to pop in, and be healed, and lifted up. We can find happiness in Christ, anytime.”
