Several thousand Catholics intercepted rush hour traffic on Tuesday in Manhattan with a walking procession with Jesus in the Eucharist, powerfully witnessing to His love and to His Real Presence in the Eucharist.

The procession, an annual event hosted every autumn by the Napa Institute, drew approximately 5,000 participants from across the country, according to the Diocese of Brooklyn’s publication The Tablet. 

Departing from St. Patrick’s Cathedral, priests, religious, and lay faithful reverently followed behind Christ in the monstrance, Who was carried under a gold canopy embroidered with an image of Our Lady of Guadalupe on the front. Many participants sang hymns and carried banners depicting the Lord and His Blessed Mother. 

Credit: Napa Institute

Tim Busch, founder of the Napa Institute, said in an emailed statement to CatholicVote that a Eucharistic Procession can have a profound effect, even if initially unseen, on those who witness it.

“This city needs grace. This country needs grace,” Busch said. “This Eucharistic Procession can bring that grace. We’ll never know the impact of our evangelization. But we trust that our Lord will change minds and win hearts through our witness.”

“And we hope that our example will inspire Catholics across America to organize their own processions,” he added, “from the biggest cities to the smallest towns.”

A beautiful witness of faith 🙏

Thousands of Catholics filled the streets of New York City for the Napa Institute’s Eucharistic Procession, lifting their voices in song to praise the Lord.@NapaInstitute pic.twitter.com/ARfiFwnhvX

— CatholicVote (@CatholicVote) October 14, 2025

Several Catholic actors attended the procession as well, including Jonathan Roumie, a native of New York who plays Jesus in the TV series “The Chosen,” and David Henrie, who starred in Disney’s Wizards of Waverly Place and the 2020 film This is the Year, which he also directed. 

Credit: Napa Institute

Credit: Napa Institute

Before the procession, attendees had the opportunity to pray with Eucharistic meditations in St. Patrick’s Cathedral led by Cardinal Giorgio Marengo, who has served for years as a Consolata missionary in Mongolia, and Norbertine priest Father Ambrose Criste. The faithful also attended Mass celebrated by Cardinal Sean O’Malley, archbishop emeritus of Boston. After the procession, Cardinal Timothy Dolan gave benediction at the cathedral.

Credit: Napa Institute

“In Jesus of Nazareth, God became a man in order to reveal the trinitarian mystery of Divine love and to save humanity,” Cardinal O’Malley said in the homily. “The Eucharist attests to the fact that Jesus is with us forever and that He loves us more than we can imagine; offering us the forgiveness of reconciliation and communion of life with God.”

“The Eucharist,” he said, “is the source of our life and our hope.”

Before the Mass, Roumie also spoke at St. Patrick’s Cathedral. 

“The embracing of Christ’s humility is essential in this journey to following Him. To be of service to everyone you meet and to bring the joy of Christ with you as you serve Him,” Roumie said, after encouraging small acts of love such as smiling at those around oneself, having a conversation or buying food for a homeless person, or holding the door for someone. 

“Why the little gestures? What’s the relevance of the smallest things? Shouldn’t I do something giant? Shouldn’t I go be on television and play Jesus? No, you shouldn’t, trust me, wouldn’t recommend it,” Roumie joked. “It is a grace and a gift of course, but you don’t have to do that. You don’t have to play Jesus on TV to be Jesus to the world around you.”

He emphasized that Christ is found in the Eucharist, and through this Heavenly food “is how we take up the mantle of mission, the program urged to us by St. Carlo by making the Eucharist part of our daily life if we can.”

“And if you’re not Catholic and you can’t receive and want to become Catholic, that’s all you got to do,” he added. “Receive if you can and if you are Catholic, receive this sacrament of He Who formed you and He Who created you daily whenever possible.”

In Fr. Criste’s meditation, he stressed the importance of engaging in the worship of Jesus in the Eucharist with intention, thoughtfulness, and love of others and allowing it to inform how one lives life outside of church walls. According to Fr. Criste, bringing Christ to the rest of the world depends on it. 

“This island,” he said of New York City, “and indeed, our entire post-modern western world — unbelievably rich and powerful as it is in terms of this world’s goods — will remain the poorest place on earth unless you, you and I engage in the sacred liturgy correctly, faithfully, internally, and with that millennia-long tradition of Holy Church. Our worshipping [of] God like this, correctly like this in the Holy Eucharist, then, makes us able to take our Eucharistic Lord Jesus Christ out into the streets.”

Credit: Napa Institute

Fr. Criste urged the faithful to set the world aflame with God’s love, and emphasized: “We have to proclaim Him to the city and to the world.”

“Can’t you see,” he said, “just how poor this richest of all the rich cities is? Can’t you see that? Don’t you feel that we must bring the love of God into every corner of each of our lives so that He, Jesus Christ, the Eternal Son of the living God, Love Incarnate, can meet the profound poverty all around us and eclipse it with His Real Presence and with that fire of His love, that burning fire of His love.”

Credit: Napa Institute