Lord of Miracles celebration in Peru: ‘It’s not enough to attend the procession,’ bishop exhorts
Auxiliary Bishop Guillermo Elías of Lima urged devotees at the Lord of Miracles feast to let their faith transform their lives, rather than limiting it to attending processions. He said devotion must lead to acts of love, especially care for vulnerable people, and warned that violence in Lima and elsewhere in Peru demands a public witness of solidarity. Elías encouraged Peruvians to prepare for Pope Leo XIV’s upcoming visit by opening their hearts to peace, justice, and solidarity. The Oct. 28 celebration included the second-to-last procession of the Lord of Miracles image through central Lima.
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At Lima’s Oct. 28 celebration of the Lord of Miracles, Auxiliary Bishop Guillermo Elías urged devotees to make their faith visible through love and service, rather than limiting it to attendance at Mass and processions. He also called for solidarity amid violence in Peru and asked people to prepare spiritually for Pope Leo XIV’s upcoming visit.
The feast day coincided with the second-to-last procession of the “Cristo Moreno,” whose image is kept at the Church of the Nazarenas in Lima’s historic center. According to the article, an African slave painted the image on an adobe wall around 1651; it survived the devastating 1655 earthquake, and other miracles were later associated with it.
In his homily, Elías asked devotees whether they sought the Lord himself or the miracles attributed to him. Drawing on the Gospel account of Jesus speaking with Nicodemus, he urged them to carry their faith beyond the image and the days of celebration.
Elías said religious observance must lead to love and good works, recalling St. Alberto Hurtado’s words: “Not doing evil is good, but not doing good is evil.” He urged the faithful to help vulnerable people, those who have nothing, and those who have lost hope.
The bishop also lamented violence in Lima and elsewhere in Peru, including deaths during assaults and attacks on buses. He said the city needed people to bear witness through their actions.
Elías linked the call to prepare for Pope Leo XIV’s upcoming visit with the trip’s motto, “Let us open our hearts.” He said this meant more than welcoming the pontiff: it also meant embracing peace, justice, and solidarity in personal, family, and community life.
Popular piety as a catalyst for social transformation and solidarity toward the vulnerable
Popular piety can become a catalyst for social transformation when prayer, pilgrimage, processions, and devotion lead people beyond religious observance into a changed way of living with others. Its social fruit is solidarity: a steady commitment to the good of all, especially people who are poor or vulnerable. But this fruit is not automatic. Popular devotion needs to be formed by the Gospel and ordered toward the Church’s liturgy; otherwise, it can remain at the level of custom or be distorted.
Popular devotions often gather people publicly, making visible that Christian faith is not merely private. The U.S. bishops describe them as reminders of the Gospel’s social dimension: human beings are interdependent, and responsibility for the common good reaches beyond one’s immediate community to all humanity. In this sense, a procession or pilgrimage can be more than a religious event. It can renew a shared awareness that people belong to one another and have obligations toward one another.
That responsibility takes a particular form in solidarity. The bishops, drawing on St. John Paul II, distinguish solidarity from passing sympathy: it is a “firm and persevering determination” to work for the common good because all are responsible for one another. Popular devotion becomes socially transformative when it helps form that durable commitment—when people return from prayer more ready to notice others’ needs, share resources, and work for their good.
Pope Francis likewise presents popular piety as an evangelizing force. It can draw people out of themselves, bring them together on pilgrimage, and make their faith visible to others. Its cultural forms—symbols, songs, feasts, and communal practices—can carry Christian faith into ordinary life, rather than confining it to formal worship.
Christian solidarity is not an abstract concern for humanity in general. The bishops emphasize that promoting the common good includes a special responsibility for the poor, for whom God shows particular concern. They also connect this duty to the Eucharist: receiving Christ’s Body and Blood commits Christians to recognize Christ in the poorest. Popular prayer, when it draws people closer to God, should therefore deepen their participation in God’s love for the poor.
The Directory on Popular Piety and the Liturgy grounds this connection in the life of Christ. Popular devotions can contemplate Jesus reaching out to sinners, healing the sick, helping the poor, and sharing human suffering in his Passion. Such contemplation can shape how devotees see people who suffer: not as distant problems, but as neighbors whose dignity and pain matter. The devotion’s social consequence arises from its focus on Christ’s own compassion and solidarity.
Pope Leo XIV sharpens this point in Dilexi te: the poor are not simply recipients of compassion but can be “teachers of the Gospel,” and service to them is an encounter in which Christ is revealed. That vision challenges charity that treats vulnerable people as passive objects or keeps them at a distance. Christian service should instead recognize their dignity and meet them as fellow persons.
Social transformation becomes tangible when devotion gives rise to practical care. The Directory describes shrines as places that should radiate charity through hospitality, mercy, sharing, and assistance. It points to concrete expressions: social-assistance centres, hospitals, education for needy children, homes for older people, shelter for poor pilgrims, and special care for the sick and disabled. In this account, a shrine’s spiritual character is not measured only by the numbers who visit it, but also by how its community responds to human need.
Pope Francis similarly notes that Christian faith and community life have inspired institutions such as hospitals, schools, and care centres. He also connects popular devotions and the charitable work of confraternities with “constructive citizenship”: believers can cooperate with civil and political institutions to serve people, beginning with the poor, while respecting the distinct responsibilities of religious and public authorities. This is a model of public engagement that neither withdraws faith from social life nor makes religion a tool of political self-interest.
The crucial movement is from worship into service. Devotion can awaken generous habits, but its social promise is fulfilled when those habits take durable form—in personal acts of care, communal assistance, and institutions that respond to people’s needs. The sources describe these works not as additions unrelated to prayer, but as expressions of the charity that Christian worship should foster.
Solidarity also calls for attention to how social action is carried out. In Dilexi te, Pope Leo XIV discusses popular movements made up of laypeople who journey together and refuse to leave the poor and vulnerable behind. He says solidarity includes addressing structural causes of poverty and inequality, including lack of work, land, housing, and social and labor rights. He also argues that the excluded should be included in shaping a common future: policies should not be only “for” the poor, but also made “with” them.
This teaching concerns popular movements directly, and should not be confused with the claim that every devotional gathering is itself a social movement. Rather, it offers a way to understand the social maturity toward which Christian solidarity can grow: people affected by hardship should not be ignored when communities and institutions decide how to respond. Devotion that forms a sense of shared dignity and responsibility can support this participation, while practical discernment is needed to connect prayer with effective action.
The Church affirms popular piety while recognizing that it needs pastoral formation. Paul VI says it can nourish generosity, sacrifice, patience, openness to others, and a sense of God’s providence; he also warns that it can be mixed with superstition, remain merely external, or fail to lead to genuine faith and service of neighbor. Pastoral guidance should therefore respect popular devotion’s real spiritual value while helping it mature.
A key guide is the relationship between popular piety and the liturgy. The bishops state that the liturgy is the criterion by which devotions are ordered: popular practices carry faith into daily life, but they do not replace the Church’s liturgical worship. Properly formed, devotion can help the Gospel take root in a people’s culture and everyday relationships.
The practical test, then, is not whether a devotion is popular or emotionally powerful, but whether it is being brought into deeper Christian life: does it lead people toward God, toward the Church’s worship, and toward concrete love of neighbor? The Church’s teaching gives a clear direction: authentic popular piety should form people who recognize Christ in the vulnerable, serve them with dignity, and pursue the common good in solidarity.