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NJ Town Mayor Orders Catholic Shrine Be Removed After 14 Years

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Our Lady Of Guadalupe Icon (Takamex/shutterstock_204643114)
NJ Town Mayor Orders Catholic Shrine Be Removed After 14 Years

Joshua GillReligion Reporter


12:24 PM 08/17/2017

The mayor of a New Jersey town ordered the removal of a Catholic shrine Wednesday that stood illegally on state-owned land for 14 years.

Hector Lora, mayor of Passaic, ordered a folk shrine to Our Lady of Guadalupe be removed from land owned by the New Jersey Department of Transportation, according to The Record.

“The shrine was located illegally on public property and its removal should not come as a surprise,” Lora told The Record. “For over six months the city offered multiple resolutions for relocating the shrine, and all of those suggestions were rejected.”

The removal of the shrine sparked grief and outrage from locals, as the site was considered the spiritual center of the Hispanic Catholic community of Passaic. Citizens held Saturday prayer services at the shrine since 2003, and paraded the icon through the town every May.


“I feel so powerless just standing here watching them take it apart,” Delfino Rocha told The Record. “It’s been here for 14 years and it’s not bothering anybody. Why do they have to remove it now?”

Citizens erected the shrine — a wooden log in a glass case surrounded by metal bars under a Mexican flag — 14 years ago when a local Hispanic youth claimed he saw the face of the Virgin Mary in the log, according to the Associated Press.

City officials looked the other way for years as a Catholic citizen group, Mayordomia Guadalupe, maintained the site. But trouble began when Mayordomia Guadalupe installed a collection box at the site and set up power lines to operate lighting for the shrine.

Lora said he could not lawfully allow a private, religious group to set up a permanent structure on public property and collect money. The city returned the floral arrangements and candles that garnished the shrine to Mayordomia Guadalupe. The shrine itself was removed to a “secure location.”


Bystander Esteban Dominguez told the Record the shrine’s removal would spark demonstrations.

“The mayor is not going to like what the reaction is going to be,” Dominguez said.

“I am standing for the law,” Lora said.

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The Marian Heart of America: Our Lady of Guadalupe and our “Post-Christian” Society

Remarks by Archbishop Gomez at the 7th Annual Napa Institute Summer Conference

Archbishop Gomez (photo by courtesy of Il Sismografo)



Pubblicato il 31/07/2017
Ultima modifica il 31/07/2017 alle ore 14:07
most reverend jose h. gomez*



My dear friends,


I am just coming back from Mexico. I had the blessing a few weeks ago to lead our first pilgrimage from the Archdiocese of Los Angeles to the Basilica of Our Lady of Guadalupe.



As some of you know, I have a strong devotion to Our Lady of Guadalupe. I learned it from my parents, beginning when I was a young boy growing up in Monterrey, Mexico.



Every summer my mom and dad would take my sisters and I on a 600-mile journey to visit our grandparents in Mexico City. And every time we went, our whole family would make a pilgrimage to the shrine of Our Lady of Guadalupe.



My experience was not unique. This is what Catholic families do in Mexico — everyone tries to make a pilgrimage at least once a year to the Basilica.



I think most of us know the Guadalupe story. It takes us back to the “spiritual dawn” of the Church’s mission in the Americas.



It was December 1531 and the Blessed Virgin appeared to a poor Indian convert named Juan Diego on a hilltop outside Mexico City.



The Virgin entrusted Juan Diego with a mission — to go and ask the bishop to build a shrine in her name.



To convince the bishop, Our Lady gave him a sign. She made roses bloom even though it was the dead of winter. Then she used those roses to “imprint” her own image on the cloak — called a “tilma” — that Juan Diego was wearing.



And as we know, that tilma is still hanging today — almost 500 years later — in the Basilica, which is built not far from the site where she first appeared.



I am remembering that history today because I believe that Guadalupe holds the “key” for understanding the times we are living in.



So, that is what I want to talk with you about today. Also, it really makes sense because the Napa Institute, as we know, is entrusted to Our Lady of Guadalupe.



I want to offer my reflections today on the important conversation that has been going on in the Church this year — the question of how we are going to live our Catholic faith and carry out the Church’s mission in a “post-Christian” society. A society that every day is becoming more and more hostile to our values and our beliefs.



It is a crucial conversation. Archbishop Chaput, is right — we are fast becoming “strangers in a strange land.” His recent book is the most important book that has been written in the Church in some time. And I agree with him — it is not a matter of indifference whether we choose one path or another going forward.