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Images of saints are ubiquitous along streets, in public squares, and in homes in Maronite parts of Lebanon. A visitor who had no knowledge of Catholicism might conclude from the images he sees in public that the Virgin Mary in particular, followed by two natives of Lebanon, St. Charbel and St. Rafqa; and St. Elijah (Ilyas) are the key figures of the Catholic faith.

For more than a millennium, the Western Roman Catholic Church has centralized its worship at the Eucharist around the Roman rite, the Mass that can make Catholics who go to church in a country they don’t know at least recognize “the same Mass,” as many would put it, even where they might not understand the language. There are, however, two long-standing exceptions to that liturgical centralization, one of which is the Hispano-Mozarabic liturgical tradition of Spain.

In the northwestern suburbs outside Chicago, on a large property bordered by a cemetery and housing tracts, crowds sometimes exceeding 200,000 have been gathering for decades on freezing December nights in the city of Des Plaines to honor the feast of the Virgin of Guadalupe in a manner that echoes the

The beginnings of the Catholic charismatic movement are often located in a period during the late 1960s, when Catholics received “the baptism of the Holy Spirit” during retreats and conferences at Duquesne and Notre Dame Universities.