Nicole Moore inside the Church of St. Vincent Ferrer on the Upper East Side of New York. (All photos by Adrienne Grunwald for The Free Press)
The Young Catholic Women Bringing Back Veils
A new generation of worshippers is longing for a ‘lost type of Catholicism.’
“I definitely don’t feel like the odd woman out anymore.”
Nicole Moore, 30, wears a veil to church every Sunday. Sometimes called a mantilla, these sheer head coverings are usually made of lace or silk; Nicole’s is gray, with a floral-like pattern. Worn by women throughout the Catholic church’s history, chapel veils fell out of favor during the late twentieth century, but in recent years there’s been “an explosion of veiling,” says Moore, who attends St. Vincent Ferrer Catholic Church in Manhattan.
Her pastor, Father Peter Martyr Yungwirth, 39, tells The Free Press he has also noticed an increase in veiling over the last two decades. Indeed, Veils by Lily, a website that sells mantillas, has gone from filling 30 to 60 orders per month to an average of 900 in the last ten years. And it seems to be young Catholics driving the trend. “I have definitely noticed an increase of women, especially young adult women, wearing veils,” says Father Roger Landry, 54, Catholic chaplain of Columbia University. He interprets the veiling trend “as an attempt to be maximally reverent to God at Mass and in receiving Holy Communion.”
That may be the ultimate reason for veiling, but it’s not the only one. To better understand what’s behind the boom, I reached out to over a dozen Catholic women, ranging in age from 19 to 42, who choose to wear a veil to church.
Havens Howell, 26, of Virginia, tells me that donning the mantilla does indeed remind her that she’s entering a sacred space, “with things that are holy and don’t happen anywhere else.”
Initially at least, the appeal can be aesthetic. “I just thought it was really pretty,” Bernadette Patel, 27, of New York, says. Meanwhile Amanda Kengor, 22, from New York, tells me she began veiling because “everyone started doing it.”
Yet all the women I spoke to say veiling has become a profoundly meaningful religious practice in their lives.
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