The Guadalajara Reporter

Chapala quietly pulls out the stops for beloved icon

Festivities surrounding the annual summer visit of the famed statue of the Virgin of Zapopan were replete with all the usual religious pageantry, with a few novel twists for the several thousand devotees in attendance.

Although an ear-splitting salvo of sky rockets heralded the start of Sunday’s colorful procession along Avenida Madero, noisy fireworks were kept to an absolute minimum throughout the two-day celebration. Instead, the tiny image was greeted more sedately with showers of confetti and soap bubbles.

In his homily during the celebration of mass, Cardinal Jose Francisco Robles Ortega deviated from the usual theme of environmental responsibility to talk about what he termed “human ecology.” He implored his flock to devote themselves to religious pursuits and the restoration of family values to combat the nation’s plague of violent crime.