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March 16 (UPI) -- Manhattan was alive with Irish pride as the 236rd New York St. Patrick's Day parade kicked off Saturday. The iconic celebration of Irish Heritage ran along Fifth Avenue and featured the traditional stop at St. Patrick's Cathedral.
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The parade opened with the "Fighting Sixty-Ninth" infantry regiment, which has led the procession since 1851.
Marching bands played renditions of iconic Irish band U2's I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For, as well as the folk song Hills of Donegal and the Dropkick Murphys' Shipping up to Boston.
Other appearances in the parade included contingents from every Irish county and the Ladies Ancient Order of Hibernians, the women's contingent of the oldest and largest Catholic fraternal organization in the world.
Visitors from around the United States and Ireland travel every year to the New York St. Patrick's Day parade, which is regarded as the oldest and largest St. Patrick's Day parade in the world, dating back to 1762.
"This parade means, I think, so much to the city. Not just Irish Americans, but the entire city, the entire melting pot," Bridget O'Brien of the St. Patrick's Day Parade Committee told WABC-TV. "It's a welcoming, open community for everyone to come and celebrate with us."
On the sidelines of Fifth Avenue, anti-abortion activists rallied after parade organizers banned pro-life groups from marching in the procession.
Organizers said they assembled at the parade to "bring renewed attention to the abortion crisis -- a humanitarian disaster that spans the globe from Ireland to New York to small town America."
"It is sad it has come to this, protesting on the sidewalks of a parade so rich in Irish and Catholic history," John Aidan Byrne, founder and president of Irish Pro-Life USA said in a statement. "Once again, we are shocked and bewildered as to why parade organizers do not allow a pro-life group, with its banner, to march in this parade honoring the Patron Saint of Ireland and of the Archdiocese of New York."
