The next two Hispanic Ministry Mass celebrations at St. Patrick’s Cathedral will be the Cursillo de Cristiandad Mass on Sunday, April 21 at 4 p.m., followed by the Our Lady of Lujan Mass on Sunday, May 5 at 4 pm.

Archdiocese of New York Auxiliary Bishop Edmund Whalen will be the principal celebrant of the May 5 Mass. 

Cursillo de Cristiandad (Cursillo in Christianity; short courses in Christianity), was founded in Spain. It focuses on the friendly testimony of dialogue among friends and being loyal witnesses of the faith. 

Our Lady of Lujan is the patroness of Argentina, birthplace of Pope Francis.         

Cursillo de Cristiandad

Cursillo de Cristiandad was founded in 1944 in Majorca, Spain, by a group of laymen led by Eduardo Bonnin Aguiló, who died in 2008 at age 90. A cause was opened in 2015 for Bonnin’s beatification and canonization.      

Cursillo leaders encourage members to “pray that we might lead others to Jesus Christ by the way we live our lives—ultreya, ‘onward,’ as we say in Cursillo.” The movement remains a mostly Spanish-speaking apostolic movement of the Church that attempts to give life to the essential Christian truths in the “singularity, originality and creativity of the person.” The Cursillo offers spiritual renewal or rebirth, through a three-day Cursillo course to begin membership.

In addition to “ultreya,” also popular in Cursillo is the phrase “de colores,’ (in colors), a reminder of joyful times when God’s unparalleled and unconditional love is especially vivid. The principal celebrant for the April 21 Cursillo Mass at St. Patrick’s Cathedral has not yet been named.

The upcoming Mass celebrates the 400^th Cursillo (weekend course) for men within the Archdiocese of New York.

At an August 2019 Cursillo conference at the Marian Shrine’s Don Bosco Retreat Center in Stony Point, Cardinal Timothy Dolan celebrated Mass.       

“You give a beautiful example of hearts burning with love for Jesus and His Church,” Cardinal Dolan told the Cursillo faithful in his homily. “In a world where sometimes, the fire of faith and love is out and extinguished, you give an example of a burning love and a burning faith in Jesus and His Church. I thank you for that, and I love you for it.”    

Our Lady of Lujan

“We’ve been celebrating this annual Mass since 1977,” Joseph Paladino, president of the archdiocesan Our Lady of Lujan Committee,” told The Good Newsroom in an April 5 telephone interview. “This is very important for the Argentinian community here in the New York area – for their faith life, their spirituality. The history is very significant (Mary under the Our Lady of Lujan title).” Paladino, born and raised in Argentina, noted that Our Lady of Lujan is also venerated in Paraguay and Uruguay. His family parish is St. James Church in Woodbridge, New Jersey.

The figure of Our Lady of Lujan is a small statue that has been venerated in Argentina since 1630. According to tradition, in 1630, a rancher, a member of a caravan, was taking the Marian figure from Buenos Aires to his ranch in Santiago del Estero. But the oxen pulling the wagon stopped inexplicably by the Lujan River.

The oxen didn’t move again until the statue was taken out of the wagon, despite the unloading of all other items from the wagon. After repeating this action and realizing the oxen would not move while the statue was in the wagon, the caravan members concluded that this was a sign that Blessed Mother Mary wanted the statue to stay in Lujan.

In 1887, the figure was crowned canonically and was moved to its current sanctuary, which was given the title of basilica in 1930 by Pope Pius XII. The feast day of Our Lady of Lujan is May 8. And it was on May 8, 2013, that Pope Francis (who is originally from Argentina) visited the Basilica of Lujan to commend Argentina to the protection of its patroness. St. John Paull II visited the basilica as pope in 1982.