Priests see popular religious traditions spurring pastoral creativity

Published: 2005-12-07

SAN ANTONIO (CNS) -- The influence of Mexican religious traditions in San Antonio allows Jesuit Father Jake Empereur to develop celebrations that incorporate popular practices. Father Empereur, acting rector of San Fernando Cathedral, uses the opening procession as a prelude to the Mass. At the cathedral before Mass on Dec. 12, the feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe, for example, there is a play about her appearing to St. Juan Diego, an Indian. On Dec. 9, the feast of St. Juan Diego, a play about him, using the Indian language that he spoke, takes place first. For Father Virgilio Elizondo the blending of Mexican and Texan religious and cultural traditions symbolizes the growing intermingling in the United States of nationalities, ethnic groups and their cultures through contact and intermarriage. Father Elizondo, a priest of the San Antonio Archdiocese and a theology professor at the University of Notre Dame, calls this blending "mestizaje," from the root word "mestizo" meaning "of mixed parentage."

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