c. 2006 Religion News Service

AURORA, Ill. _ For the second year in a row, Silvestre Hernandez is playing Jesus, so he already knows his lines.

Along with 20 others gathered in a linoleum-floored old schoolroom on a cold evening, the 21-year-old factory worker, born in Guanajuato, Mexico, rehearses in Spanish his lines for a Passion Play dramatization of the death of Jesus. The players, blue-jean clad teenagers and young adults, are preparing the play for Sacred Heart Church, a 157-year-old Catholic congregation of 500 families, 90 percent of whom are Hispanic.

On Good Friday, which is April 14, the same group will wend its way along an 11-block route on Aurora’s predominantly Hispanic near East Side, for a “Way of the Cross,” or Via Crucis, procession that reenacts and commemorates the march of Jesus to his crucifixion. As the Hispanic population continues to grow in the U.S., such commemorations have become increasingly popular, especially in Catholic churches during Holy Week.

Last year, it snowed on Good Friday, so it wasn’t easy for Hernandez to be tied to the cross as part of the enactment.

“It was terrible,” said Jessie Rodriguez, a white-haired Sacred Heart parishioner who coordinates the procession. “At the end we had to wrap him up in a blanket.”

The Way of the Cross procession has become a Good Friday tradition in this town of 150,000 outside Chicago, where almost one-third of the population is Hispanic. Such dramatic and public religious rituals may be coming to the streets of more communities, as growth and greater dispersion spreads the U.S. Latino population into new areas of the country.

A March report from the Brookings Institution, a Washington, D.C., think tank, shows Hispanic populations moving out from their traditional metropolitan population centers in New York, Los Angeles and Chicago into suburbs and growing Sunbelt areas like Las Vegas and Orlando, Fla. The main attraction appears to be jobs.

“The big story of the last two censuses is the geographic dispersion of the Latino population,” says Timothy Matovina, an expert in Latino theology and culture and director of the Cushwa Center for the Study of American Catholicism at the University of Notre Dame. “The Latino population is spreading out and so the traditions are spreading out.”

As the Hispanic share of the U.S. population increases, Latinos continue to influence religious communities, particularly Catholics. Almost 40 percent of America’s 67 million Catholics are Hispanic, and over the past four decades Hispanics have accounted for 71 percent of the increase in the number of Catholics.

“The Hispanic presence is affecting all churches and all denominations,” says Ronaldo Cruz, executive director of the Secretariat for Hispanic Affairs of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops. In the Catholic Church, more than 20 percent of parishes are majority Hispanic, and 4,000 parishes have a Hispanic ministry.

“They are changing the face of the church but also impacting society,” Cruz says.

For most Hispanics, religious symbolism is important.

“In the Latino Catholic culture, what you find is a sacramental life,” Cruz says. The reenactment of the suffering and death of Jesus in the Way of the Cross has cultural and spiritual meaning.

Ana Maria Diaz-Stevens, who teaches church and society at Union Theological Seminary in New York, says this is a traditional and communitarian spirituality that brings religion and believers into public space.

“It is religious devotion but it is also a cultural thing,” she says. “These practices signify something in terms of your identity as a Hispanic. They’re saying, `We’re here, this is how you will know us.”’

Tradition is a big part of Sacred Heart’s identity in Aurora. Aurora’s oldest Catholic parish was burned out of its church home in 1998. The cross that topped the 100-year-old building survived the fire and is carried in the Way of the Cross procession. The congregation meets in the now shuttered parish school.

The Way of the Cross procession has been performed in Aurora for more than 25 years, and coordinator Rodriguez, a member of Sacred Heart for 45 years, estimates it attracts around 1,500 spectators. “Every year it gets a little larger,” he says.

Like Rodriguez, some people stay involved with the ritual. It’s important to their faith. Karina Tellez, 16, is back for a second year in the passion play and procession. The teenager, who learned about the activity through the church’s youth group, says her participation has deepened her faith.

“I’m starting to read the Bible this year,” she says.

MO/JL END RNS

Editors: To obtain a photo of a Way of the Cross reenactment, go to the RNS Web site at https://religionnews.com. On the lower right, click on “photos,” then search by subject or slug.

Jessie Rodriguez is CQ