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The feast at El Rocío is organized around the pilgrimages of 124 hermandades, or brotherhoods. These groups make the picturesque journey into town in ox- or horse-drawn wagons, and stay in special group houses for the duration. The first and oldest of them, Almonte’s Hermandad Matriz, is the custodian of the sanctuary that the town and feast is built around and the key organizing force for the feast.

Early in the week before Pentecost, the sleepy town of El Rocío starts to come to life. More than 121 brotherhoods and as many as one million people will join in the raucous Marian devotion.

For members of the 124 brotherhoods who form the core of the pilgrimage to El Rocío, the process of getting to and from the feast is as important as the destination.

Every year, one million people descend on an otherwise isolated, whitewashed town on the edge of a national park in southern Spain for a grand annual pilgrimage to celebrate Nuestra Señora del Rocío. The feast culminates in a wild, raucous procession of her statue into the plazas, beginning in the deep of the night following Pentecost.

Because Chuukese culture is as communal as it is, Catholic life centers on shared activities, not on solitude. Many pray with repetition of the Rosary, often at night as a family.

Though the islands of Micronesia are geographically isolated from the rest of the world, flights are relatively infrequent and visitors few, and Micronesian cultures focus so much on family cohesion, Micronesians have migrated in surprisingly large numbers.

Rosary and devotion to Mary are important Chuukese Catholics. On the Outer Island of Pollap, Mary is a strong role model for women.

Well-attended Advent and Lenten reconciliation services, a culturally important family reconciliation ritual that is incorporated into funeral novenas, and a traditional, communal practice of reconciliation in the aftermath of violence suggest how important reconciliation is in Chuukese culture.

In the Chuuk Lagoon, the dead are often buried very close to the house, rather than in separate cemeteries. Funerals are major, multi-night events organized and attended by the whole community, and by relatives from abroad if possible.

Respect, the paramount value in Micronesian society, is communicated by deference: by speaking quietly and often lowering one’s eyes; by trying not to “stand above” another; or even trying not to stand out from the crowd. So it is at worship.