Taking Christ to the streets: Bishop Silva leads annual Corpus Christi procession

Story and photos by Darlene J.M. Dela Cruz
Hawaii Catholic Herald

Passersby on the highways and byways leading from the Co-Cathedral of St. Theresa to the Cathedral Basilica of Our Lady of Peace in the heart of Honolulu were blessed with prayers and hymns by marching faithful as Bishop Larry Silva led the diocese’s annual Eucharistic Procession on May 29.

The procession has been a tradition in the Islands since 2007 to mark the Feast of Corpus Christi, also known as the Solemnity of the Most Holy Body and Blood of Jesus Christ. The event each year since has drawn hundreds of local Catholics eager to make a public expression of their faith along the 1.25-mile walking route from the co-cathedral to the cathedral.

Bishop Silva began the procession at nearly noon after celebrating the mid-morning Sunday Mass at the Co-Cathedral of St. Theresa. He carried a golden monstrance holding the Holy Eucharist down School Street. Other clergy took turns holding the monstrance as the procession traveled over the freeway and onto Vineyard Boulevard toward downtown Honolulu.

The procession culminated at the Cathedral Basilica of Our Lady of Peace, where the faithful gathered for adoration and benediction of the Blessed Sacrament around 1 p.m.

The Eucharistic procession is a universal Catholic practice for the Corpus Christi feast.

According to “Holy Communion and Worship of the Eucharist Outside Mass,” a Vatican document issued more than 40 years ago on the feast of Corpus Christi, a procession of “special importance and meaning of the pastoral life to the parish or city” is “desirable … when it can truly be a sign of common faith and adoration.”