Latin America lives out its Holy Week immersed in violence, tension, and hope.

This is a mysterious time. In the depths of Latin American communities, Holy Week is a ritual and symbolic exercise where Catholic liturgy and popular tradition blend with pre-Hispanic and mestizo cultural languages to tell the story of the Passion, Death, and Resurrection of Jesus Christ.

Urban Holy Week, I know, can sometimes feel less profound. Immersed in the frenzy of city life, it reflects the tension of modern societies. And yet, stepping just beyond the large cities, during these sacred days, one encounters another world — one that suddenly places us at the very heart of the Christian faith and at the center of our peoples’ history.

Indeed, for five hundred years, the story of the Passion has had the capacity to hold the suffering of the people. It is not merely a spectacle to be watched from a distance, like a piece of theater. The deeper we enter into the intimate experience of the people — especially Indigenous and marginalized communities — Holy Week becomes a time to reconnect with personal pain, with memory, with the recent and distant history that defines us and propels us forward.

Sadly, it is not an exaggeration to say that Latin America is currently undergoing a time of crucifixion. The long-standing realities of poverty and inequality are now joined by new crises: the pandemic, neopopulisms of various stripes, the cruel operations of organized crime, and a reconfigured global economy that is increasingly closed and protectionist.

The faces of suffering — millions of migrants, marginalized and scorned Indigenous communities, searching mothers looking for their disappeared children, exploited workers, threatened entrepreneurs, and citizens repressed for demanding democracy, justice, and freedom — form a constant outcry, one too often ignored, dismissed, or forgotten by those in power and their chorus of supporters.

Yet even amid this painful landscape that we might prefer not to see — but that insists on making itself known through its breadth and depth — signs of hope and resurrection continue to emerge. Every act of humanity, fraternity, mercy, or justice — no matter how small or who performs it — opens the door to hope and is a sign that evil does not have the final word. The Resurrection is present in every struggle carried out with goodness — with compassion for the suffering of our neighbor, of our people.

The figure of Saint Óscar Arnulfo Romero remains ever close and meaningful, especially for his prophetic witness. “The Spirit who raised Christ from the dead,” he once preached, “has given us, in the risen Christ, the model for history. All histories must move in that direction — to form people who, after carrying their crosses, rise to a freedom that must be savored even now, here on earth.” And again: “I am saying that the risen Christ already belongs to present history, and that he is a source of liberty and human dignity. That is precisely why we celebrate Lent as a preparation for Easter.” He concluded: “Lent and Easter are ours — and every people can say the same.” (February 24, 1980)

May the certainty of the Resurrection of Jesus Christ — rising from the suffering and limitations of the Latin American people — grant us hope to continue on the journey.