By Ana Rodriguez Soto - Florida Catholic newspaper
Way of the Cross leaders Randolph McGrorty, CEO of Catholic Legal Services, and Claudia Herrera, right, campus ministry director at St. Thomas University, introduce the First Station as Myriam Mezadieu, COO of Catholic Legal Services, center, looks on.
Members of The Call, a music ministry group out of St. Timothy Parish, Miami, led the singing during the Way of the Cross.
Led by Belen sophomore Julian De la Maza, Way of the Cross participants walk to the second station outside the Linda Ray Intervention Center, which serves infants born addicted to cocaine.
One of the Missionaries of Charity who minister to Miami's homeless takes part in the Good Friday Way of the Cross through Miami's streets.
Participants in the Good Friday Way of the Cross through Miami's streets pray the Fourth Station outside the Children's Home Society.
Message on the T-shirt of a participant in the Way of the Cross through Miami's streets.
Participants in the Good Friday Way of the Cross walk past the parking garage for the Miller School of Medicine on their way to the Sixth and Seventh Stations.
Participants in the Good Friday Way of the Cross pray the Sixth and Seventh Stations a few blocks from the Miami-Dade County Courthouse and the Veterans' Administration Hospital. Holding the cross is Elaine Melissa Urena of the Pastoral Juvenil Hispana (Hispanic Young Adult Ministry).
Some of the younger participants in the Way of the Cross pray the Sixth and Seventh Stations, from left: Santiago Rodriguez, 9, Emmanuel Lopez, 11, and Andres Rodriguez, 10.
Eva Deming of St. Thomas University's Campus Ministry prays at the Seventh Station, near the VA Hospital/Miami-Dade Courthouse.
Participants pray the Eighth Station outside Jackson Memorial Hospital's Highland Park Pavilion, a mental health and addiction treatment center. Holding the cross is seminarian Brayan Rodriguez.
Seminarian Jose Fernandez holds the cross as participants pray the 11th and 12th stations outside the Ryder Trauma Center.
A member of the Juan XXIII (John XXIII) retreat movement prays during the Way of the Cross.
Tariq Javeed, a Catholic from Pakistan who arrived in the U.S. with his family as a refugee in 2016, holds the cross while praying at the 13th station. He works at Camillus House and volunteers at the Missionaries of Charity shelter every weekend.
Participants kneel in the street next to the Jackson Plaza Nursing and Rehabilitation Center during the 12th station, Jesus dies on the cross.
Participants kneel in the street during the 12th station, Jesus dies on the cross.
Karina Bendana, of St. Catherine of Siena Parish in Miami, carries the cross to the 14th and final station, at Camillus House.
Participants pray at the 14th and final station, outside Camillus House.
Photography: ANA RODRIGUEZ-SOTO | FC
MIAMI | Sacred: It’s a word associated with churches, icons and God. But what about a trauma center? A mental health facility? A women’s jail?
The annual Way of the Cross through Miami’s streets reminds participants that those places are sacred too, because of the connection between the God we worship on Sundays and the God we see daily in each other, between the Jesus who suffered on Good Friday and the one who continues to suffer each day.
Photographer: ANA RODRIGUEZ-SOTO | FC
Led by Belen sophomore Julian De la Maza, Way of the Cross participants walk to the second station at the Linda Ray Intervention Center, which serves infants born addicted to cocaine.
Held the morning of Good Friday, March 30, the prayerful gathering drew nearly 300 people to the Missionaries of Charity shelter, where they began the 1.5-mile, nearly 2.5-hour walk through the surrounding streets with a final stop at the Camillus Housecomplex, less than a block from where they started.
The stations coincided with locations in the heart of Miami’s hospital district, such as the Children’s Home Society, Jackson Memorial Hospital’s Highland Pavilion for Mental Health, the Ryder Trauma Center, the Linda Ray Intervention Center, and Jackson Plaza Rehabilitation and Nursing Center.
A few blocks from each stop were other reminders of the suffering of Christ in the world today: the VA Hospital and Miami-Dade Courthouse, the UM/Jackson Transplant Center, and the Miami Center for AIDS Research.
Participants at the Way of the Cross ranged from the very young to the more experienced: children in strollers and adults in wheelchairs, teenagers and college students, and the vast majority in between.
They prayed for the homeless and veterans, for unwed mothers and abused children, for those addicted to drugs and dealing with mental health problems, for those in jail and those struggling to put food on the table, for the elderly and the sick, for victims of war and violence, for immigrants and refugees.
“Today we want to respond to the challenge of mercy, by encountering his passion, death and resurrection where it is taking place in our midst,” said the opening prayer.
Among those who took turns carrying the cross was Tariq Javeed, a Catholic from Pakistan who arrived in the U.S. with his wife and three children in 2016, after spending four years at a refugee camp in Thailand. Javeed now works for Camillus House but the family spends every weekend helping out at the Missionaries of Charity shelter.
The Way of the Cross through Miami’s streets is a tradition dating back 25 years, when it was begun by local members of Pax Christi. It was later taken up and expanded by the Archdiocese of Miami’s Office of Campus Ministry and the pastor of St. Francis Xavier Church in Overtown (which merged with Gesu in 2009).
The event is now organized by the archdiocesan offices of Missions and Social Advocacy, Catechesis, Detention, and Youth and Young Adults, as well as the lay missionary group Amor en Acción.
Photographer: ANA RODRIGUEZ-SOTO | FC
Participants pray at the 14th and final station, outside Camillus House.
