Los Angeles – A multilingual Mass celebrated by Cardinal Roger M. Mahony of Los Angeles underscored the extent to which reverence for the Virgin of Guadalupe has spread beyond Mexico, with immigrants from China and the Philippines among those who love her.
Among the roughly 6,000 Catholics who took part in last weekend’s Guadalupe procession in mainly Hispanic East Los Angeles were immigrants from East Asia and Samoa as well as from Mexico and the nations of Central America.
Aztec dance troupes, mariachi bands and floats were all part of the scene as more than a score of parishes came together for the area’s oldest celebration of the feast of the Virgin of Guadalupe, the patroness of Mexico.
“We came to thank her (the Virgin) for having helped us cross the border,” Mexican immigrant Hipolito Luciano told EFE.
“Before leaving our country, we asked her to protect us from the ‘migra’ (U.S. immigration authorities), and to take care of us so my five-months’ pregnant wife would not lose the baby she carried in her stomach,” he said, gesturing to spouse Patricia and the couple’s now 4-month-old son.
“She (the Virgin) is part of our cultural identity and, as parents and grandparents, we see ourselves with the obligation to transmit this tradition to Mexicans born here,” said Guadalupe Alvarez, a 60-year-old Mexico City native and dancer who took part in the festivities.
Joining Mexicans in the religious parade were people from El Salvador, Honduras, Guatemala, Costa Rica and Colombia.
“She is very miraculous,” Salvadoran Myriam Perez said of the olive-skinned Mary who appeared to Aztec peasant Juan Diego on a hill near Mexico City in 1531. “She is the Virgin of all immigrants.”
The procession ended with a multilingual Mass conducted by Mahony in the stadium at East Los Angeles College, a service that for the first time include Korean, Chinese, Filipino and Samoan parishes.
“This is a day of great hope, walking arm in arm as brothers and sisters … this is a true procession,” the cardinal told the faithful.
According to the archives of the Los Angeles Archdiocese, the city’s first procession for the Virgin of Guadalupe was held in 1930.
“We’ve done this for many decades, it’s one of the oldest celebrations of the Guadalupe in America,” Mahony said Saturday. “Every year we do this in early December to bring our people together in recognition of Our Lady Guadalupe.”
For the past three years, the procession has been organized by the Los Angeles Committee of Guadalupans United.
Covering 8,762 square miles (22,430 square kilometers) and with a Catholic population of 4.3 million, the Los Angeles Archdiocese is the largest in the United States in terms of both area and the size of its flock, more than 60 percent of which is Hispanic. EFE
