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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.

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.