Florida festival sustains mission for migrants

NARANJA, Fla. — Martin Monjaraz takes special pride in helping to organize the Guadalupe festival on the grounds of St. Ann Mission, where he first embraced the Catholic faith as a teen after moving from Mexico to work in the surrounding farmland decades ago.

“Here there’s a way to welcome that it’s always like we’ve known one another forever,” Monjaraz said by the large tent where hundreds of people had been streaming in since well before dawn to bring roses, poinsettias, candles and prayers to a statue of

Our Lady of Guadalupe.

The feast draws millions of pilgrims to the main basilica in Mexico City and to churches big and small across the Americas around Dec. 12, which marks the anniversary of one of several apparitions of the Virgin Mary witnessed by an Indigenous Mexican man named Juan Diego in 1531.

For St. Ann Mission church, where Miami’s urban sprawl fades into farmland and the Everglades’ swampy wilderness, it’s the most important event of the year — both culturally and for fundraising to sustain a ministry for migrant farmworkers that dates back to 1961.

Dressed in a bright huipil dress, parishioner Noemi Lopez had been busy all day emceeing first the predawn testimonials and then the folkloric dances that followed the solemn Mass celebrated by Miami’s auxiliary bishop.

She said the raffle and food sales of Mexican specialties at the festival — always held on weekends, so more workers can attend — help keep the lights on year-round in the main mission church and the three chapels it runs in the housing projects where farm workers still live, often without transportation.

“This is what made me stay here. It’s a family that doesn’t abandon you,” she added, recalling when the church helped her raise funds to beat a 24-hour eviction notice more than a decade ago, when she had recently arrived from Mexico with her children.

To the hundreds of workers in the camps and the 450 registered member families at the main mission, St. Ann provides everything from sacraments to social assistance — children’s dental health, marriage counseling, food distribution and legal immigration advice.

“In this country, immigration is fostered, but immigrants are neglected,” said the Rev. Rafael Cos, who has run the mission for five years.

Rebecca Blackwell/Associated Press St. Ann Mission’s annual festival for the Virgin of Guadalupe drew thousands on Dec. 10 to its most important event of the year to raise funds for its program to minister to migrant farm workers. The mission near Miami was founded in 1961.