Luis Torres, Ph.D.
Posted August 22, 2024
As I entered the square to the Vatican’s Saint Peter’s Basilica in Rome, it seemed to move farther away from me with each additional step I took to reach it. One cannot enter Saint Peter’s Basilica easily, not through a wide-open front door, but rather time and effort and waiting and standing and shuffling along in the midst of patient lines are all required to seek admittance. The weather appears to be hot in Rome perpetually, without rain, belying the high humidity, since Rome sits just off the coast of the Mediterranean. During my period of sweating and thirsting and tiring, I kept approaching nearer.
The monumental Egyptian obelisk in the center of the square, jarring in its location near the iconic Basilica, had been a mute witness to the crucifixion of Saint Peter, explaining its placement. The obelisk was a testament to another time and another culture and another religion, bearing the cross that has been added to adorn the top of the obelisk, perhaps reaching 150 feet from the floor. Despite the apparent religious dissonance between it and the iconic Christian Basilica, the obelisk seemed a magnet to the throngs who entered the vast oval. The immense space for pilgrims in front of the Basilica is called in English a “square” despite that the shape is more a circumscribed oval, not in the contour of a square, and elsewhere and at another time it could have been called a plaza—or in the previous Italian, a “piazza,” from the Greek. Finally, as I reached the center of the piazza, the Basilica stopped receding from me, waiting.
Nearing closer to Saint Peter’s Basilica, my younger daughter, Mercedes and I were in the Oval or Square or Piazza, encircled by the vast number of massive graceful columns forming the two gigantic curved arms stretching from either side of Saint Peter’s outward, each a half circle, toward the crowds, embracing the thousands of people ever-present facing the Basilica, on each row of columns the sentinels of larger-than-life sculptures of significant religious figures through the ages, peering down munificently upon the pilgrims below.
Continuing, soon thereafter, having moved slowly up the line, we were permitted to enter Saint Peter’s Basilica through one of the several side doors. Finally, I was in what had been my church throughout my lifetime, entering for the first time. The Basilica belongs to and awaits all Catholics, and all others, as it had belonged to me; the term “Catholic” is defined as “one,” or “universal,” and each chapel, or church, or cathedral, or this Basilica, had therefore belonged to me, as to everyone.
Our recent trip to Rome was a religious pilgrimage, personal despite my sharing it here to consider a larger theme. My younger daughter Mercedes and I went to visit Saint Peter’s Basilica, the grave site of Saint Peter, buried approximately 30 feet below the Basilica’s floor, his burial site accessible only through narrow, dark, and dank passages. We also visited the iconic and astonishingly beautiful Sistine Chapel in an adjacent building, and the several other museums within Saint Peter’s. We also engaged in a reverential visit to the nearby Mamertine prison—more descriptively, Mamertine dungeon—where both Saint Peter and Saint Paul were held captive before their executions by Roman soldiers at the direction of Emperor Nero, beheading for Saint Paul, crucifixion for Saint Peter—as he directed his Roman captors, he wished to be crucified upside down, so he would not be martyred in the same manner as Jesus Christ.
However, it might be surprising that this article is not really centered on my and our recent pilgrimage, nor on religion, as I am not qualified religiously. This is from my perspective as a religious Chicano academic activist, with one facet of my pilgrimage my desire to consider what religion might mean for us Latinos today in the U.S., especially given our rapidly transforming community. According to the widely-accepted Pew Research Center, “Catholics remain the largest religious group among Latinos in the United States, even as their share among Latino adults has steadily declined over the past decade…. By contrast, the share of Latinos who identify as Protestants – including evangelical Protestants – has been relatively stable, while the percentage who are religiously unaffiliated has grown substantially over the same period.”
One would wish here for a definition of “religiously affiliated” or “unaffiliated,” and to understand if such definition has evolved or changed over the last decade, as there are no doubt gradations of religious connection or association, not necessarily a sharp demarcation of membership. Nevertheless, clearly the figures are dramatic in the steady decline of Catholic affiliation among Latinos. Specifically,
“[a]s of 2022, 43% of Hispanic adults identify as Catholic, down from 67% in 2010. Even so, Latinos remain about twice as likely as U.S. adults overall to identify as Catholic, and considerably less likely to be Protestant. Meanwhile, the share of Latinos who are religiously unaffiliated… now stands at 30%, up from 10% in 2010 and from 18% a decade ago in 2013.” (Among U.S. Latinos, Catholicism Continues to Decline but Is Still the Largest Faith | Pew Research Center)
According to this Pew study, a countervailing aspect of our community, however, is that 52% of Latino immigrants identify as Catholic, while only 36% of U.S. born Latinos so associate, indicating that to some extent, the increase or decrease of such affiliation is driven by variations in immigration (both immigrants and U.S. born are or might be associated with other religious groups).
Consideration of these questions is also more elaborated and complicated by the upcoming elections, statewide and national, as they apply to Chicanos and other Latinos, the application often foisted upon us, not always by our own choice. The politicization of religion is perpetual but also cyclical, especially coincident with campaigns such as for President. For example, according to The Independent news source, concerning the Presidential election, a new “Evangelicals for Harris” group “highlights Trump’s quote saying he doesn’t ask God for forgiveness,” but the same article shows a full photo in which “Donald Trump holds a Bible outside of St. John’s Church in Washington, DC following Black Lives Matter demonstrations.”
Latinos likewise engage in some elements of religion, albeit from my perspective as more cultural than political, for example, when César Chávez, Dolores Huerta and others in the United Farm Workers would carry the image of La Virgen de Guadalupe on some of their lengthy marches. Coincidentally, in Saint Peter’s Basilica a beautiful image of La Virgen de Guadalupe is displayed in one of the crypts or burial chambers among the numerous sites of Papal burials, the Virgen’s image especially connected to Saint John Paul II commemorating his visit to México to the Basilica of La Virgen de Guadalupe. In addition, in 1966 César Chávez went on a hunger fast of 25 days duration. When
Chavez ended his fast, Senator Robert Kennedy sat next to him, and both engaged in the Catholic ritual of taking the host during a religious ceremony by the Church. (They did so on an altar created by Denver artist Emanuel Martínez.)
The day after my daughter Mercedes and I first entered Saint Peter’s Basilica, we would enter another side door for a small group tour to descend down to the subterranean crypt—erroneously termed a “tomb,” which gives the sense of an elaborate burial chamber—where Saint Peter is buried. Most, if not all of the popes in the long line of succession from Saint Peter onward are buried inside the vastness and remarkable breadth and beauty and magnificence of Saint Peter’s Basilica, or in an adjoining grotto, likewise glorious. However, that is not true for one of the main figures in Christianity, Saint Peter himself, the Apostle who had walked with and broken bread with and sailed and prayed with Jesus Christ himself, and about whom Jesus said, “On this rock I will build my church” (Matthew 16:18). No, there is no glistening, radiating beauty where Saint Peter is buried, for the first Pope of the Christian and then Catholic Church. Fortunately, his burial place is left undisturbed after all these centuries, fittingly no more elaborate than a pauper’s grave, which he was. Except in heaven.
Luis Torres, PhD, retired, served as Deputy Provost for Metropolitan State University of Denver for Academic and Student Affairs and professor of Chicana/o Studies. Torres is a noted advocate for equity in education, policy and community efforts.
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