Province of St. Elias, North America

The Irish Carmelite, Fr. Michael Moore, while on a visit to New York City in 1887, received from Fr. James McMahon the promise of an endowed foundation at a specified location in that city. Archbishop Michael Corrigan considered the area designated to have enough churches for its population. When efforts to change the Archbishop's mind failed, the Irish Provincial, Fr. John Bartley, came to see Mgr. Corrigan. Refusing to change his position on the endowment, Archbishop Corrigan offered Bartley a new parish to be separated from St. Stephen's and to include the care of Bellevue Hospital. Fr. Bartley returned to New York City in March, 1889 with three other Carmelites to begin the parish of Our Lady of the Scapular on East 28^th Street.

Foundations followed in Tarrytown, NY (1896), Middletown, NY parish (1912), which included missions in surrounding communities, St. Albert's Priory, Middletown, NY, and the Bronx, NY (1920). These houses pertaining to the Irish Province were erected into a Commissariat in 1922 and became a Province in 1931. The Tarrytown community has provided professors to Marymount College, notable among them the former Prior General, Fr. Kilian Lynch. The Province has also lent assistance to the Irish mission in Zimbabwe and was closely associated with the beginnings of the Carmelite Sisters for the Aged and Infirm. Members of this Province also founded the Carmelite Hermitage in Bolivar, PA, United States.

Further foundations were made at the National Shrine of Our Lady of Mount Carmel in Middletown, NY, serving as a Carmelite Spirituality Retreat Centre; parishes in Troy, NY (1970), Brooklyn, NY (1982), and Boca Raton, FL (1994). The Province also staffs Pope John Paul II High School in Boca Raton, FL (1980), and has houses of formation in Middletown, Tappan, and residences in Bloomingburg, NY, Rochester and Scarborough. The Province has the responsibility of forming new Carmelite candidates in Trinidad and Vietnam.

At present the Province of St. Elias has about 80 religious working in North America, Trinidad, Vietnam, Colombia, France and Italy.