When World Youth Day comes to town, everyone knows it.
When Pope Francis makes a pastoral visit, whole countries shut down to prepare for him.
And when the U.S. bishops held their National Eucharistic Congress this summer, the city of Indianapolis rolled out a red carpet, transforming the airport, the downtown, and the landmark stadium into a Catholic haven, for the better part of a week.
The International Eucharistic Congress isn’t quite like that. The gathering is smaller than events like World Youth Day or the World Meeting of Families, drawing fewer than 10,000 people. Most events take place at a convention center in Quito’s center, but some are spread out at parishes across the city.
Still, if you tell most people that you’re in town for a Eucharistic Congress, they’ll give a strange look, say they’ve not heard of that, or ask if you aren’t sure that you’re here in Ecuador to see the Galapagos Islands.
Basically, if you’re an American in Ecuador, and you’re not here for the Galapagos Islands, people aren’t going to believe you.
But some pilgrims have come quite a distance to participate in the Congress, and were glad to tell The Pillar why.
‘Join together with Jesus’
Fr. Joseph is a new priest of the Taiwanese diocese of Taichung, ordained last year. He came to Ecuador with a contingent of nearly 50 Taiwanese Catholics, on a journey that took them more than 25 hours by plane.
They likely traveled farther than any other pilgrims.
Fr. Joseph told The Pillar that pilgrims came because while Eucharistic devotion is common in Taiwan — with many parishes offering adoration — catechesis is sometimes lacking.
“The people don’t always know what they adore,” he told The Pillar.
It’s not clear whether the catechetical sessions at the Eucharistic Congress sessions will help, especially because of a language barrier. With the Taiwanese delegation is a religious sister who speaks Spanish, and Fr. Joseph, who speaks English. They aim to translate, on-the-fly and unofficially, to their group.
Still, Fr. Joseph explained another reason for his fellow pilgrims to make a long trip: Taiwanese Catholics can feel isolated — less than 4% of the island nation’s population is Catholic. Worshiping with other Catholics makes his people feel less alone, the priest said.
“Even though we don’t know Spanish — we don’t know what they say in the liturgy — every one of us knows that we join together as one people in the Mass, and that we join together with Jesus, who lived out the most gracious gift for us.”
‘Jesus is there’
For Fr. Jorge Aviles Wong, the trip to the International Eucharistic Congress was much shorter.
Aviles is a priest of Guayaquil, in the southern part of Ecuador. He came with pilgrims from his diocese — including some of the very few young people in attendance at the International Eucharistic Congress, many of whom serve as volunteers.
Aviles said he thinks few young people attended the Congress because getting vacation time in Ecuador is not easy, and the cost of the event was also a factor. But he also acknowledged that the format of the Congress — heavy on theological talks — might not be the preference of the region’s younger practicing Catholics.
In addition to his work as a seminary formator, the priest is a leader in a burgeoning global Catholic youth movement, called Hakuna, which says it uses music to show the beauty of life, and the beauty of Christ. They organize holy hours of adoration, formation talks, charity activities, retreats, and missionary activities.
During the International Eucharistic Congress, the group organized a Wednesday night holy hour at a Quito parish, at which nearly 100 young people were in attendance. While that might sound like a small gathering by some standards, it might have been the largest gathering of young Catholics during the International Eucharistic Congress — indicating again how few young people are in attendance at the larger Congress events.
At the holy hour, a confession line snaked around the back of a church, while young people sang along to pop-sounding worship music, accompanied by acoustic guitars and a drum.
Aviles exposed the Eucharist, and preached, telling young people that “in front of the Eucharist, you can find the sense for your lives.”
“I told them that in Spain, where Hakuna started, 60% of young people have no religion. And that the principal cause of mortality among young people is suicide. That people are lacking a sense of their own lives.”
“But when you go to adoration, and are close to the Eucharist, you start realizing that Jesus is there. That he’s really present. And then you start realizing God’s love for you, and that starts to give meaning to your life.”
Young people who attended the meeting told The Pillar that was their experience.
Camilla, 25, from Quito, told The Pillar that she started coming to Hakuna holy hours just six months ago.
“I was really separated from God — and now I have this link to God again.”
“The most impactful part of Hakuna are the songs, and the adoration, and that all of us are young, and here together, with the same problems and the same interests, sharing ourselves — and there in the middle is God, always.”
Camilla said she hears the voice of God in the music and worship of Hakuna.
“God is working through our music, sometimes, with the exact word we need to hear, in the exact moment we need it.”
Ricardo, sporting a Hakuna jacket, is 33 and from Guayaquil. He came to Hakuna gatherings with a cousin, who is a priest.
“At first I didn’t like it. I was like, ‘I don’t know what I’m doing here.’ And then I feel like Jesus touched my heart. I feel like I’m really myself with Hakuna. I was unconverted, and then I had a conversion through Hakuna.”
“I think that Jesus started like coming into my soul … and I opened my heart to him. And I said it’s like my second first communion, now, that I receive the Eucharist again.”
“When you come to Hakuna, you see all these people living their faith, through being together, and through songs, and through happiness … and that’s cool.”
For his part, Fr. Aviles recognized that some people might criticize Hakuna, that some claim the music and community produce only an emotional response — a high, rather than a conversion.
But the priest pushed back on that idea.
“Emotions are part of the human life. We live with emotions, so emotions are important. Maybe when you start, it’s like you have a more emotional response, but then the normal human thing is that the emotions will be be controlled, and we’ll go to something deeper and deeper.”
The priest puppeteer
The International Eucharistic Congress has, to date, featured speakers from around the world — cardinals, bishops, missionaries, many of them attesting to the power of Jesus Christ in their lives.
It also featured a priest with his puppet. For more than 20 years, Father José Antonio Maeso has been something of a street priest in Ecuador, spending time among gang members, prostitutes, drug dealers, and other criminals.
He’s spent a lot of time in ministry with prisoners.
And there at the prison where he is chaplain, he usually brings his puppets — as the priest believes that he can reach people through theater.
He has brought his puppets to emergency shelters, to World Youth Days, and, in 2019, to meet Pope Francis.
The priest’s performance in Quito this week — focused on fraternity and non-violence — brought mixed reviews. While some attendees said they had never seen anything like it, and others said quickly they had seen enough, some attendees told The Pillar they viewed the puppet show as a viable and persuasive means of proclaiming the Gospel.
All part of the broad range of experiences on offer at the International Eucharistic Congress.
Inculturation
On Thursday evening at the Eucharistic Congress, attendees were offered the invitation to attend Holy Mass at local parishes, in their own languages.
One such Mass was offered in the Quechua language, spoken by roughly 450,000 indigenous people in Ecuador, Colombia, and Peru.
In attendance were indigenous people of northwestern South America, along with priests and religious who minister to them. In attendance were also scores of local media outlets, Catholic and non-Catholic, eager to document the event.
The liturgy included elements of the cultures of various indigenous tribes of the region.
Here’s what it looked like:
