Guadalupe celebration to air live from cathedral

By Tim Puet
Catholic Times Reporter

About a year ago, the diocese’s Office for the Vicar of Hispanic Ministry began planning for a celebration of the Feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe on Saturday, Dec. 12 that would have been large enough to fill a stage in Kasich Hall of the state fairgrounds and attract 5,000 to 6,000 people.

Then the COVID-19 pandemic hit in March and caused a drastic change in plans. The event was moved from the fairgrounds to Columbus St. Joseph Cathedral, and the number of those who can attend was reduced to 100, including participants.

But people throughout central Ohio can watch and listen to the celebration as it happens. WCMH-TV, Channel 4 in Columbus will be televising it live from 10 a.m. to noon, and it will be broadcast on La Mega Radio 103.1 FM and livestreamed on YouTube.

“It’s a great disappointment not to have the large site we were planning on, but having it on television and radio will expose the story and traditions of Our Lady of Guadalupe to thousands who are unfamiliar with it,” said Lisset Mendoza, the key organizer of the event. “It also has brought members of the diocese’s parishes with Hispanic populations together in a way nothing else has done.”

Members of these parishes will be taking part in the program and will make up most of the congregation for the feast-day Mass and related events at the cathedral. Mendoza said two or three members from each of the parishes will be in the pews for the invitation-only event. 

Also attending will be members of the Missionary Servants of the Word, a congregation of religious sisters with convents at Columbus Christ the King and St. Stephen the Martyr churches and a formation house at Columbus Corpus Christi Church.

Celebrating the Mass, which will begin at approximately 11 a.m., will be Archbishop Christophe Pierre, who as apostolic nuncio to the United States is Pope Francis’ representative to this country – the equivalent of an ambassador.

The pope appointed Archbishop Pierre, a native of France, to the post in 2016. He was the papal nuncio to Mexico from 2007 to 2016. He also has been nuncio to Haiti and Uganda.
“(Columbus) Bishop (Robert) Brennan called Archbishop Pierre to ask if he would attend the celebration,” Mendoza said. “It wasn’t a hard negotiation because of the archbishop’s ties to Mexico.”

As nuncio to the United States, Archbishop Pierre also is chancellor of the Pontifical College Josephinum in Columbus, the only seminary outside of Italy that is directly affiliated with the Vatican. “The archbishop visits the Josephinum whenever he is in Columbus,” Mendoza said. “He will be there on Friday, Dec. 11, the day before the celebration, to talk to the seminarians.”

The program for the cathedral celebration will begin with an introduction by Sister Maria Ecclesiae, HSMCJ, who grew up attending Dover St. Joseph Church and is a member of the Daughters of Holy Mary of the Heart of Jesus.

It will be followed by a selection of Mananitas, the traditional Mexican song of celebration sung to the Virgin Mary on the morning of the feast, that will be performed by a choir with members from seven parishes. Next on the program will be three folk dances – the first with two people, followed by large-group dances with 16 and 18 people, respectively. These were prerecorded at Columbus St. Catharine Church because of the pandemic and will be the only parts of the program done in advance.

Recitation of the rosary will follow, with a different person leading each of its five decades.
Roberto Navarro, senior director of U.S. church engagement for Catholic Relief Services, will deliver the keynote speech. He has more than 25 years of experience in various ministries and represents the agency in its dealings with the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, seminaries and regional and diocesan Catholic organizations.

The program will conclude with the Mass. The entire event will be in Spanish, with English translation available for viewers.

Besides the Dec. 12 celebration, the diocesan Hispanic ministry has been focusing on youth, family and evangelization programs as part of V Encuentro (Fifth Encounter), a national meeting of more than 3,000 people involved in ministry to Hispanic Catholics. 

Encuentro is a four-year process of evangelization, mission and consultation under the theme “Missionary Disciples: Witnesses of God’s Love” and inspired by Pope Francis’ apostolic exhortation Evangelii Gaudium (The Joy of the Gospel). The process of Encuentro has been the catalyst for developing Hispanic ministries nationwide during the past 50 years.

“Because of COVID, the diocesan Hispanic ministry has been unable to do many of the things it would have liked to this year,” Mendoza said. “We are now starting to assess the needs of parishes with significant Hispanic populations and how to support them.

“Planning for the Our Lady of Guadalupe celebration has been a tremendous help with this because it has brought together a huge community of people from those parishes who never had met before. It has created a new unity among those parishes, even though the meetings have to be by Zoom videoconference rather than face to face.” 

Mendoza said the meetings began as quarterly events, then switched to monthly and biweekly and now take place every Monday evening.

She estimated that the diocese has 5,000 active Hispanic Catholic parishioners. Its 17 parishes with significant Hispanic populations are the Parroquia Santa Cruz, Christ the King, St. Agnes, St. Cecilia, St. James the Less, St. Ladislas, St. Matthias, St. Peter, St. Stephen the Martyr and St. Thomas the Apostle, all in Columbus, as well as Delaware St. Mary, Dover St. Joseph, Kenton Immaculate Conception, Marion St. Mary, Mount Vernon St. Vincent de Paul, Newark St. Francis de Sales and Portsmouth Holy Redeemer.

Acting as manager for the diocesan Office of the Vicar for Hispanic Ministry, Mendoza has been employed by the Diocese of Columbus since September 2019 and was with the Dominican Learning Center in the city from 2014 to 2019, serving as its director in her final year there. She is a California native who received a degree from California State University-San Bernardino in sociology and social studies with a minor in Spanish. She has been a Columbus resident since 2013.