By Jessica Easthope

Like many of the things you see on display at Settepani in Williamsburg, it all starts with a snowfall of flour.

But among the croissants, cookies, and cakes, panettone is their shining star.

Pastry Chef Bilena Settepani is the manager at her family’s bakery.

“We don’t just make it for Christmas, we make it all year round,” Bilena said. “My mom often says that she married my dad for his panettone.”

Her father, owner Nino Settepani, has been making the sweetbread for decades but Bilena brings a modern flavor to the traditional treat, adding Nutella and candy and helping create a panettone Advent calendar.

“Our family is one of the first families to be making panettone artisanally in the United States,” Bilena said. “Panettone doesn’t always have the best reputation and I’m here to change that.”

Their product is nothing like the boxed panettone you can buy at a store. Made with the best ingredients they can get their hands on, producing the Christmas classic isn’t for the faint of heart.

“It takes a lot of tender love and care to make it. It is not for the weak,” Bilena said. “I work right beside my father and our team, it’s a three-day process to make one batch.”

“It doesn’t last a year, it only lasts four to six weeks maximum and when you get it, it’s nice and fresh, it’s moist,” Nino said. “There’s a lot of aroma that comes out.”

It’s clear Nino and Bilena take their baking seriously, but what’s more important to the Divine Mercy parishioners is their faith and how they mix the two together.

“Faith for us is really part of our everyday lifestyle,” Bilena said.“ Giving back to our community and that people are less fortunate is really important to us and we don’t just say that, we mean it with everything that we do.”

Settepani hires from their own community, and has training internships for those in need, helping build skills that will put them on a path toward a brighter future. Donations to churches and hospitals are what keep them going on busy days during the Christmas rush.

“Christmas is the time to give and of course it’s great to receive gifts but to be able to give to someone who needs something is so much more powerful,” Bilena said.

“I feel like that’s the only way to do it because you cannot run a business where you only take,” Nino said. “You have to run a business where you balance and share the love and share the peace that should come with the coming of Christ.”

They bake with precision and control and package with a firm hand, but at Settepani, their panettone is all love.

By Jessica Easthope

As quick as it is to turn a newspaper page, Matt Schiller is taken back in time.

The Tablet’s business manager from 1973 to 1993 can point to the place where it all started. Sixty years ago a homegrown giving campaign was born with the hope that it would change lives.

“There’s a couple of charities that I really believe in, but Bright Christmas is probably the biggest one, it’s because I know it’s in good hands.”

At a time when The Tablet was first digitizing its operation and mailing list, Bright Christmas had a humble beginning, but its reach was anything but.

“It was a huge difference for those families to have a little money to buy Christmas presents to do other things, or get a dinner basket or something,” Schiller said. “It was something that I personally saw the impact of, and it really resonated with our readers. People love the idea that they were doing something for people close to home.”

And it has stayed close to home. Over the decades, the fund has made Christmas bright for thousands of children and families and agencies helping those less fortunate. Schiller said in the early days, Bright Christmas was evidence that generosity came from the heart, not the wallet.

“They would do these Bright Christmas stories, and those generated all kinds of interest,” Schiller said. “People donated money, they quilted blankets, they would donate clothes. They wanted to take care of the people in Brooklyn and Queens and it’s great that they were responding to The Tablet. They were reading those stories, and they were understanding, and they were moved to action.”

Now as tens of the thousands of newly arrived migrants count on the Church for help, the Bright Christmas campaign continues to evolve right along with the needs of the Diocese of Brooklyn.

“Bright Christmas as far as I know has never had a goal where they’ve said we’ve had to raise this much,” Schiller said. “The important thing is how many people are giving and is it coming in in those $2 and $10 donations, are more people responding because that’s how you know you’ve connected with people that’s a connection to me that is unbreakable.”

But in an ever-changing diocese in an ever-changing city, Schiller hopes the goal of Bright Christmas never changes.

Schiller and dozens of other donors are already helping kids have a Bright Christmas this year.

U.S. bishops are asking for more security for houses of worship.

In a recently released letter to congress, Cardinal Timothy Dolan, the head of the USCCB’s Committee for Religious Liberty, asked leaders for at least $200 million in federal funds for the “nonprofit security grant program.”

It provides funding support to nonprofit organizations that are at a high risk of a terrorist attack.

John Lavenburg, the national correspondent for The Tablet and Crux, joins Currents News to talk more about how Cardinal Dolan and the U.S. bishops are speaking up to protect the faithful.

The Catholic visually impaired community gathered at a Manhattan church Wednesday, Dec. 13, to celebrate the feast day of their patroness, St. Lucy. 

The annual Mass at St. Francis Xavier Church is organized by the Xavier Society for the Blind, a Catholic organization that provides biblical sources and faith materials in Braille for free to blind Catholics across the globe. 

Father Jamie Dennis, a blind priest from the Diocese of Owensboro, Kentucky, used their materials to celebrate the liturgy for St. Lucy. He said the Mass helps the community grow together in faith. 

After Mass the people in attendance were able to venerate the relics of St. Lucy and St. Angela Merici, another patroness of the blind.