Putting Faith Out Front

Socorro Galvan’s most sacred space is on her front lawn.

There, a stone statue of the Virgin Mary stands 3 feet inside a brick enclosure that Galvan’s husband built so that his wife could “shout” her faith to the world.

A Christmas gift from Galvan’s daughter 10 years ago, the statue also is a centerpiece of the Santa Ana neighborhood: a place where parents cross themselves and pray while walking their children to school, and one passerby is given to throwing dollars at the holy image. It is also where Galvan prays her first Hail Mary each morning before heading to Mass across the street.

“She is a comfort to me,” Galvan said of the statue. “All of my problems, especially my worries over my children, I turn over to her. One day, a lady came by and told me I was brave because she had a statue she wanted to display but she was afraid it would create ill will in her neighborhood. Not me. I can shout to anyone that I’m Catholic.”

Catholics traditionally have used shrines like Galvan’s to honor holy figures, memorialize loved ones or as a form of art. In Orange County, personal shrines to the Virgin Mary, the Virgin of Guadalupe or Jesus Christ are commonly found in older neighborhoods where Mexicans have lived for generations.

“You see this in the Italian neighborhoods back East and in the Mexican-American neighborhoods in California,” said Sabina Magliocco, assistant professor of anthropology at Cal State Northridge. “It’s an expression of faith and an expression of identity, a way to very openly declare their practices and identity as Catholics. It’s a tradition that has been around a long time and is not disappearing.”

In fact, sales of religious crosses, icons and framed prints with religious sayings have increased by 40% in the last five years at the Paulist Press Book Center, a Catholic store in Costa Mesa.

“More families are getting into it and are being brought up in their religious faith,” store owner Patty Broesmale said. “It’s not possible to know all of the reasons. But it just seems that more people are going back to their faith or are coming into their faith.”

Antonio Pedrosa’s shrine to the Virgin Mary is the product of a promise kept. After recovering from pneumonia in 1955, the 73-year-old retired cement mason vowed to build an altar to display his gratitude. For 15 years, the small shrine adorned Pedrosa’s backyard until he bought another house in Santa Ana and attempted to take it with him.

After the shrine crumbled, Pedrosa spend six months building a new one. It now sits in the frontyard near the sidewalk and is topped by a steel cross and a bell Pedrosa created from a cup.

During the holidays, neighborhood children stop in front of Pedrosa’s Santa Ana home to sing Christmas carols before the shrine.

“As long as I live, it will be there,” he said. “I didn’t even know what I was going to build. It evolved over time, spontaneous and with no blueprint. It just came from the heart.”

Typically, people who express their faith with public shrines or altars live in working-class, ethnically diverse neighborhoods, Magliocco said. Shrines run the spectrum in style and design, from statues of a single religious figure to elaborate, creative displays of the Last Supper or birth of Jesus.

Victoria Perez, who lives in the Los Rios historic district of San Juan Capistrano, placed her statue of the Virgin Mary in a fountain on her front lawn. Birds drink the water as Mary, with her outstretched arms, protects the neighborhood, Perez said. The statue was a Mother’s Day present from her daughter.

“This is part of my Mexican upbringing,” she said. “I pray all of the time. It has helped me get through the bad times in my life. I don’t think this tradition will disappear as long as there are people who believe.”

Inside the Perez home, images of the Virgin Mary and Jesus Christ line the walls; crucifixes adorn each room.

“In upper-class neighborhoods, everything tends to be more uniform,” Magliocco said. “People there are conforming more to the expected norms. Those norms don’t include expressing your faith by putting the Madonna in a tub in your yard.”

The shrines are a passionate way of expressing faith, said the Rev. Alfredo De Dios of Our Lady of the Pillar Catholic Church in Santa Ana. For Latinos, faith is an emotional experience, he said.

“Northern countries are more cold, more rational,” De Dios said. “But Latinos are more emotional. The American style you see in communities like Mission Viejo or Rancho San Margarita is different. People are more educated generally, more intellectual. They don’t show their emotional side as much even if inside they feel the same as the Latinos.”

The passion and creativity of the religious displays has drawn freelance photographer Yolanda Alvarez to old Mexican barrios. During her free time, Alvarez is trying to recapture her childhood by photographing personal shrines that belong to strangers.

Alvarez recalls that her grandmother always kept a candle glowing beneath a rendering of the Virgin Mary in her bedroom. Alvarez sees her photographs as a means for expressing her faith and honoring her heritage. She hopes to someday publish a book.

“Those are really intimate memories I have of my grandmother,” said Alvarez, who lives in Orange. “I admire the effort people put into showing their faith. I think it’s a beautiful thing that reminds me of an old time. It’s a deep part of the culture of my grandparents that I love very much.”