Workshop explores Mary as evangelizer, advocate for justice

ROME – At a time when Latin American spirituality is shaping much of the broader vision of the Catholic Church, where Marian devotion is as much a cultural devotion as it is religious, a recent workshop focused on the role this spirituality has amid social challenges within that cultural context.

Much of what might be dubbed a “social spirituality” of Marian devotion examined during the workshop focused on Mary’s role as a mother not just compelling believers to pray and do penance, but also an advocate for justice amid violence, poverty, and instability.

Titled, “Mary: Star of Evangelization and of the Mission for Latin America Today,” the workshop was organized by the Pontifical Commission for Latin America (PCAL) and held on the Dec. 12 feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe, a Mexican devotion that has become prominent throughout all Latin America and beyond.

Keynote speakers included Argentine Cardinal Víctor Fernández, prefect of the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith (DDF); Father Stefano Cecchin, president of the Pontifical Marian Academy; Bishop Luis Marin de San Martin, undersecretary of the Synod of Bishops, and Rodrigo Guerra, secretary of the PCAL.

The PCAL, dedicated to studying and analyzing the cultural, social, political and ecclesial realities of Latin America, is part of the Dicastery for Bishops, and its president is therefore the prefect of the dicastery, a position currently held by Archbishop Filippo Iannone.

In a keynote address, Fernández stressed Mary’s role as an evangelizer, noting that she brought Jesus to her cousin Elizabeth, causing John the Baptist to leap for joy in Mary’s womb.

Mary’s desire to go to Elizabeth, to bring her Christ and to help her a moment of need and transition, is “the heart of popular piety,” Fernández said, calling Mary “the mother of evangelization.”

In this sense, Fernández said the church “proposes an integral evangelization (which) speaks of the dignity of every human being.”

When Mary runs to Elizabeth after hearing the angel’s greeting, “We see her heart, her evangelizing heart. Our whole soul, our whole heart, is for the promotion of the person,” he said.

A good pastor, he said, thinks not only about how to bring Christ to the people, but how to comfort and accompany them in moments of difficulty, with the loss of a loved one, or when they can’t make it to the end of the month.

“We can’t separate these things,” he said, noting that Mary in scripture did the same.

Pointing to the Wedding Feast of Cana, when Mary interceded for the newlywed couple who had run out of wine and were about to be an embarrassment in front of their guests, Mary was sensitive to their situation and intervened to ensure they were lacking nothing that they needed, Fernández said.

Mary also in her “Magnificat” in the Gospel of Luke speaks of how God stands beside and exalts the poor and the humble, casting down the powerful from their thrones.

In speaking of the humble and advocating for those in need, “we see with whom she identifies,” he said.

Attended by priests, religious and seminarians from Latin America studying in Rome, the workshop offered a glimpse into a more social understanding of Mary and the role of Marian devotion in the church, informed by the lens of the church’s social doctrine.

The church in Latin America – where many nations have been plagued by conflict, political dictatorships, and social instability due to poverty and drug and gang violence – has generally tended to focus more on social doctrine, and this has especially been true in the decades since the Second Vatican Council.

Both Pope Francis, a native Argentinian, and Pope Leo XIV, who spent the bulk of his ministry as a missionary in Peru, had and have a strong Latin American influence in terms of their broader pastoral vision and their own personal spirituality, including popular Marian devotion.

Francis expressed this devotion by going to the Basilica of Mary Major with the frequency he did, visiting after every international trip and on other select special occasions to venerate the beloved Maria Salus Populi Romani icon housed there, and choosing to be buried there.

Leo has also demonstrated his own sense of popular Marian piety in visiting the icon of Our Lady of Good Counsel – a beloved devotion of the Augustinians and the name of the US province he briefly led as prior provincial – in the small Italian town of Genazzano just days after his election, to entrust his papacy to her care.

In a Q&A session during last week’s workshop, several of the priests in attendance noted the prominence of the Virgin Mary and of Marian spirituality in Latin American culture and asked what role this devotion can have in responding to cultural challenges such as violent conflict, drug and gang violence, and political turmoil.

Specific mention was made about the Madres buscadoras in Mexico, mothers who look for their loved ones or their remains amid the ongoing human rights crisis in the country, as well as the transitional justice process in Colombia in relation to its longstanding internal conflict, and to the broader search for freedom and liberation from poverty, violence and injustice throughout Latin America.

In response, Fernández said the feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe, who appeared with mestiza ethnicity to a simple indigenous man named Saint Juan Diego in 1531, was a response, past and present, to the suffering experienced by so many Latin Americans.

In the case of the Madres buscadoras and those caught in a cycle of violence due to drugs or other factors, there is a positive and a negative aspect of Marian devotion at play, he said.

The positive aspect, he said, is that the mothers searching for their disappeared children “find consolation in Mary, they feel bonded to the mother, and they know intuitively that this mother understands what they are going through because she lived it, united to the cross.”

“It happened when she lost her son, when she lost Christ, and was looking for him everywhere. So, this mother is one who can profoundly contemplate this pain, and understand what these women are living,” he said.

On the other hand, Fernández said what can seem like a “contradiction” or a sword in the heart for devotees that is common throughout Latin America, is that even the kidnappers, assassins, and those who perpetrate violence wear images of the Virgin Mary, oftentimes Our Lady of Guadalupe.

“Some use this often in the movies, to show that evil takes and wears the veil of the Virgin Guadalupe. This is a reality of ours,” he said, recalling the 2000 Colombian film, “La Virgen de las Sicarios,” or “Our Lady of the Assassins.”

As pastors, he said, priests ought to convey two things in this regard, the first of which is that “it’s possible that the Virgin is with these criminals, that she is there trying to touch their heart, that the Virgin is trying to make her attempt to be a mother, it’s not that she’s absent in this.”

At the same time, he said, pastors ought to emphasize Mary’s role as an evangelizer and as a promoter of an “integral evangelization.”

“This woman who sang to God because he exalted the humble and overthrew the powerful, this woman proposes an integral evangelization,” he said.

Integral evangelization, Fernández said, means that Mary is a mother who “doesn’t just ask that people pray and go to Mass,” but she is a mother “who also fights for justice, who also seeks peace, who is also thirsty for fraternity.”

The gangbangers, assassins and perpetrators of violence who carry Mary’s image, as if she is protecting them and their cause, received an incomplete formation in Marian devotion, he said, stressing the need for a better catechesis in Marian spirituality.

Similarly, Cecchin said the problem of Marian devotion being used by criminals as if to endorse their behavior is not unique to Latin America, but is also a challenge in Italy, with organized crime and various mafia groups.

“All of the mafias have Mary. The mafias, from the south, go to wash their bullets in the holy water, they recite an Our Father, they have their bible, they have Saint Michael, and above all the Virgin,” he said, noting that when a mother has a son who is killed, often “they go to the virgin asking to kill the other one, who killed her son,” he said.

Cecchin said his academy has an entire department called Liberare Maria dalle mafie e dal potere criminale, or, “Free Mary from the mafias and from criminal power.”

Pope Francis, he said, was right to place so much emphasis on a proper formation, for children but especially for mothers, because “The mother is the center of everything for whether the child does good or does harm.”

He lamented that seminaries are increasingly dropping courses in Mariology as part of their formation programs, opting instead to dedicate just a few hours to the topic as part a broader course on ecclesiology.

“A priest who doesn’t have a basic Mariological formation preaches … maximalism or minimalism,” and there is no balance or middle ground, he said.

Cecchin said both his academy and the PCAL are promoting the establishment of “Marian observatories” dedicated to forming priests, catechists, and faithful generally in Mariology and Marian devotion in every country throughout the world.

“This note is very, very important to help the person,” stressing the need in the church, especially in areas where popular Marian piety are more prominent, to develop and maintain “a healthy Mariology to a healthy Marian devotion.”

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