passion

LENGTH: 775 words

HEADLINE: THE PLAYERS CHANGE, BUT THE STORY STAYS THE SAME

BYLINE: By Lesley Bannatyne, Globe Correspondent

BODY:
In the parish hall of St. Benedict's Catholic Church in Somerville, Equileo Paz is telling me about the Salvadoran youth group he directs. They're here for a daylong gathering, a "convivencia," and it's lunchtime: Kids, young couples with babies, and a cadre of young men crowd around cafeteria tables.

What I really want him to talk about, though, is what it's like to be Jesus.

For four years, Paz has shouldered an 8-foot-tall, handmade wooden cross through the cramped streets of East Somerville on Good Friday while hundreds looked on, praying, meditating, or singing their way through "Via Crucis" the Stations of the Cross, the story of Jesus from condemnation through burial.

I'm often surprised by the pageant. One moment the neighborhood stands as always, cars idling outside double-deckers and chain link, kids playing street hockey, their backpacks piled on the curb. Then, seemingly out of nowhere, a noisy throng materializes and packs the street, chanting and banging tambourines. The procession forms an island around the person portraying Jesus and watches as he stops in tiny yards or on porch steps to dramatize different parts of the biblical Passion story.

Paz's English comes thoughtfully, and nearly perfectly.

"Sometimes I cry," he says softly. "It's not just doing drama, I can feel all the stations. And when Jesus says, 'It is finished,' and gives up his spirit, you can do that with all your heart."

I ask him how heavy the cross is. He guesses it's about 50 pounds, and rubs his shoulder in memory of its weight. "I could still feel it after three days."

The Rev. John McLaughlin sits nearby, listening. "They like it heavy," he interjects, with obvious affection for Paz. "Emotions are in our bodies; we need to feel what's happening."

McLaughlin, second-generation Irish and Spanish-English bilingual, has been at St. Benedict Parish for nearly two decades. It was he who first took the Stations outside to the streets 16 years ago. "I knew they did it in warmer countries," McLaughlin tells me. "It wasn't any specific ethnic thing; I considered it ordinary pastoral care in this particular corner of the earth."

I know McLaughlin's corner of the earth it's a storied corner. His church was built across Broadway from an Ursuline Convent and school where, on an airless August night in 1834, an anti-Catholic mob torched books, smashed icons, and, finally, burned the building to the ground.

But things evolve quickly in this dense warren of streets. On McLaughlin's watch alone, the families that fill his pews have changed at least three times: First they were Italian and Portuguese, then Brazilian and Guatemalan, now they're mostly Salvadoran. McLaughlin is pleased that it's safe here for his flock, themselves no strangers to violence and fear. McLaughlin bear-hugs one of his parishioners and confides, "His great-grandfather may have been murdered in El Salvador because he was Indian."

Paz, a lab technician at a scientific research company, says he's giving the role of Christ to his friend Roberto Tejada this year. Supposedly, he looks more like Jesus. Instead, Paz will produce the pageant, something he's clearly excited about, since it's grown over the yearsin theatricality and participants. The dozen Salvadoran men at the next table, for example, all play fully costumed Roman soldiers. When Paz points them out, they grin and wave.

The pageant is cast very carefully, by invitation, almost by having a calling. Paz has had to intuit who's spiritually ready to play Mary, or Veronica, or Simon. "We see personality and if they are devoted in a religious sense," says Paz. "Via Crucis" finishes inside St. Benedict's, where the crucifixion scene is performed.

You hear the sound of real hammers. Jesus is stripped of all but a single cloth. The cross is raised, the lights dim, and the sound of women crying pierces the dusky church.

McLaughlin takes me into the church and shows me the deep purple cope and vestments he'll wear this Good Friday. Sixty-seven-year-old McLaughlin still leads the procession, but he says he's drawing back, letting his parishioners take the lead. His goal is to have the "Via Crucis" belong completely to them, so that if he weren't there it would still go on. McLaughlin smiles briefly, and his gaze lifts to take in the whole church.

"That's the way it should be," he says.

St. Benedict's "Via Crucis" begins at 5 p.m. Friday at St. Benedict Parish, 17 Franklin St., Somerville. It lasts about two hours.

NOTES:
CITY WEEKLY SOMERVILLE / URBAN DIARY