Actors in Passion plays gain spiritual insights from portrayals

Published: 2004-04-15

ST. CLOUD, Minn. (CNS) -- Mel Gibson is not the first Catholic to have a passion for reproducing Christ's passion. While Gibson's "The Passion of the Christ" has played to tens of millions of moviegoers since opening on Ash Wednesday, hundreds of central Minnesota Catholics have been passionately engaged this year -- as in past years -- in local reproductions of Christ's climactic act of love. The dramatizations are "a very important way of putting people in touch with what happened," Kathleen O'Laughlin told the St. Cloud Visitor, newspaper of the St. Cloud Diocese. A ninth-grader and member of St. Mary of the Presentation Parish in Breckenridge, O'Laughlin portrayed Veronica in this year's Good Friday living Stations of the Cross produced by St. Mary's youth group. According to tradition, Veronica wiped Jesus' face as he struggled to carry the cross to Calvary. Like many others involved in Passion dramatizations this year, O'Laughlin said her role has given her an opportunity to personalize the people and events of Christ's final hours.

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