What's New

Remarkable as the growth of the Church was in its first 50 years, the growth and strengthening of the Church in Igboland over the next 50 years was no less remarkable.

Catholic life in Igboland is exceptionally vibrant and vital, though not without tensions and paradoxes. Catholic practice there embraces the spectrum from traditional Roman Catholic devotions like the Rosary and Eucharistic Adoration to charismatic and Pentecostal forms of dancing devotion—and in some contexts combines all of these at once.

The most visible, ritualized celebration of the Nativity of Jesus in Spain occurs not on December 25, but on the twelfth day of Christmas, January 6, the feast of Epiphany—the Día de los Reyes Magos, or Feast of the Three Kings.

Holy Week recalls a wide range of emotional experiences, from the jubilation of Palm Sunday to the pain and violence of Good Friday and the hopefulness of new life at Easter, but even so, parishes across Abidjan in their different contexts celebrate them in different ways.

Marian spirituality is especially important in Chile. Major devotions and Marian celebrations take place at sites throughout Chile.

Hundreds of dancers, many in feathered headdresses and indigenous-style costume, dance vigorously for hours during the days leading up to the feast, and on the December 12 feast itself, in the vast plaza in front of the Basilica of Our Lady of Guadalupe.

The story of the apparition of the Virgin of Guadalupe in 1531 is one that almost any of her devotees can recount by heart.

Some 20 million people a year visit the Basilica of Santa María de Guadalupe, now the most visited Catholic site in the world. Many of the people who journey here report that they have walked for days and camped nearby as well, just to have a short time visiting their Mother.

Matthew Chitwood, a fellow with the Institute of Current World Affairs, provides an updated account of Holy Week in Cizhong, China. In the years since we first visited the village, infrastructure development has taken its toll on the farmland and rural character of Cizhong. A dam on the Mekong River provides needed hydropower but displaced a number of communities who are resettling on Cizhong's fertile rice fields and vineyards.

Syro-Malabar and Syro-Malankara Catholics (and Syrian Orthodox Christians of India) have a special traditional way to mark the Last Supper at their family table, using local food substitutes for the Passover bread and wine.