Guadalupe celebration set Monday
A contingent of Butler Catholics will be among the Catholic faithful celebrating Mass in Pittsburgh Monday in honor of Our Lady of Guadalupe.
Bishop David Zubik will be the principal celebrant for the annual Mass for the Feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe at 7 p.m. at Saint Paul Cathedral, Oakland.
“It is a great joy to celebrate this Mass for Our Lady of Guadalupe and highlight the devotion she holds, especially among the people of Central and South America,” Zubik said. “This celebration is a great way to experience the different flavors faith takes in different parts of the world. I hope that young and old alike will come to share in this vibrant expression of faith.”
One group coming to share will be a busload of parishioners from St. Paul Roman Catholic Church, 128 N. McKean St., said Mary Agnes McKay of Butler, who is in charge of the church's Hispanic ministry.
McKay, a retired Slippery Rock University education professor, was tapped for the job 12 years ago, she said, because she was running a Spanish school for younger students at a time when the diocese was trying to reach out to Hispanic Catholics.
“St. Paul's has a Mass in Spanish the last Sunday of every month at 2 p.m.,” McKay said. “Three times a year we have a series of rosary recitals in a different house every night in Spanish.”
She said, “I wouldn't say we have a lot of parishioners who are Hispanic, but there are close to 100. There are Mexicans, Puerto Ricans and other Latinos in the parish.”
Taking a bus of St. Paul congregants to the Mass of the Feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe has become an annual December event, McKay said.
“It's not exclusively Latin Americans,” she said of the bus riders. “It's gotten more diverse as people have come to understand the solemnity of this feast day.”
The feast commemorates the apparition of the Virgin Mary to a Mexican peasant boy, Juan Diego, in 1531.
The olive-skinned Virgin of Guadalupe is Mexico's most popular religious image; devotees believe that she can cure almost any sickness.
About 5 million people attend the Monday services at the Basilica of Our Lady of Guadalupe in Mexico City, according to the Basilica's officials.
“She is the mother of Jesus, the Latin American vision of Mary the mother of Jesus,” said McKay. “She is highly revered and led to the conversion of thousands of indigenous Mexicans to Christianity.”
In Pittsburgh, the ceremonies will begin with the arrival of the image of Our Lady of Guadalupe to the cathedral entrance where Zubik and the congregation will greet her with the singing of “Las Mañanitas” (a traditional song of celebration).
A procession into the cathedral will then take place with a color guard of flags of many nations. Mass in Spanish will follow.
McKay estimated the Mass will draw 1,500 worshippers to the cathedral.
McKay said, “Years ago, we used to have our own Mass at St. Paul, but the new bishop, he speaks Spanish and understands the importance of the Lady of Guadalupe.”
The celebration marks the 10th consecutive year for the Feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe at the cathedral, according to the Pittsburgh Diocese.
