Angelus News | March 22, 2024 | Vol. 9 No. 6
On the cover: To cap off a nearly five-decades-long career working in Church communications, Francis X. Maier had an ambitious book idea: a ‘snapshot’ of the Church in America at this time in history that captured both its strengths and its sicknesses. On Page 10, Maier shares what he took away from hearing more than 100 “confessions”’ with American Catholic leaders for the project. On Page 20, John L. Allen Jr. offers his own diagnosis of the uneasy relationship between U.S. Catholics and Rome during the Pope Francis pontificate.
On the cover: To cap off a nearly five-decades-long career working in Church communications, Francis X. Maier had an ambitious book idea: a ‘snapshot’ of the Church in America at this time in history that captured both its strengths and its sicknesses. On Page 10, Maier shares what he took away from hearing more than 100 “confessions”’ with American Catholic leaders for the project. On Page 20, John L. Allen Jr. offers his own diagnosis of the uneasy relationship between U.S. Catholics and Rome during the Pope Francis pontificate.
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Christ the King’s passion play has been<br />
performed at more than 50 locations over<br />
the past 37 years. | COMUNIDAD PRIMERA<br />
CORINTIOS 13<br />
Passion plays reenacting Christ’s final<br />
hours during Holy Week.<br />
Passion plays emerged as a popular<br />
evangelization tool in medieval<br />
Europe, and were later brought to the<br />
Americas by missionaries, said Father<br />
Juan Ochoa, pastor of Christ the<br />
King and director of the archdiocese’s<br />
Office for Divine Worship.<br />
The plays found fertile ground in<br />
Mexico, he said, where Spanish missionaries<br />
used them to teach indigenous<br />
tribes that human sacrifices were<br />
unnecessary because God had already<br />
sacrificed his only Son for them.<br />
Today, Passion plays remain popular<br />
largely with the archdiocese’s Mexican<br />
community, he said, especially<br />
among those who can relate to a<br />
suffering Jesus.<br />
“It’s one thing to read in the Bible<br />
about the passion of Jesus,” he said.<br />
“But when you’re there watching,<br />
it completely comes alive in a very<br />
different way.”<br />
At Christ the King, Comunidad Primera<br />
Corintios 13 — an organization<br />
that began as a youth group and now<br />
engages multiple generations — will<br />
present a Passion play depicting the<br />
Last Supper through Jesus’ crucifixion.<br />
The production — which will be<br />
shown at the parish and at St. Ferdinand<br />
Church in San Fernando this<br />
year — has been performed at more<br />
than 50 locations over the years, said<br />
Maria Elena Burgos, who’s been with<br />
the group since its infancy.<br />
At St. Emydius Church in Lynwood,<br />
about 60 people have been gearing up<br />
since December to perform for about<br />
2,500 spectators, said organizer Efrain<br />
Alvarez.<br />
The group has performed for 19<br />
consecutive years, Alvarez said, and<br />
actors are poised to reenact various<br />
Gospels from Holy Thursday through<br />
Easter Sunday.<br />
And at St. Marcellinus Church in<br />
Commerce, parishioners are getting<br />
ready to stage a series of dramatizations<br />
on Good Friday just as they’ve<br />
done for the last 10 years, said director<br />
Luis Carlos Betancourt.<br />
Services will begin with a Via Crucis<br />
St. Marcellinus Church parishioners stage a series<br />
of dramatizations every Good Friday depicting<br />
Christ’s final hours. | ST. MARCELLINUS<br />
<strong>March</strong> <strong>22</strong>, <strong>2024</strong> • ANGELUS • 15
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