Good Friday Procession Brings Faithful to City Streets

The procession, showing Roman soldierswho lead Jesus in chains, passes Washington's Headquarters on Liberty Street.

By Nancy Peckenham

Hundreds of Catholics took to the streets of Newburgh to take part in a procession that recreated the passion of Jesus Christ as he was betrayed and condemned on Good Friday.

Members of St. Patrick’s Catholic Church took on the roles of Jesus, his apostles, two thieves condemned along with him and the Roman soldiers who put him in chains and brought him to be crucified. Two men dressed as Roman soldiers carried a cross along the route.  Catholics have traditionally observed the Stations of the Cross throughout Lent, with a special observance on Good Friday, but only in the past five or six years has the live passion procession been performed in Newburgh.

These two men who played the 'ladrones" or thieves endured the cold to walk in the procession.

Led by pastor Reverend Fernando Hernandez, the procession stopped along the way where the participants re-enacted scenes of Christ’s betrayal and journey to the cross. Several hundred people, many of them Mexican, followed and at each stop a member of the congregation read aloud in Spanish, and occasionally in English, a passage describing what Jesus encountered on his way to the cross.

Daisy Vale said that this year’s route, which went down Grand Street to Broadway then down Liberty Street to Benkard, was designed to bring attention to the poverty that people live in. The procession also stopped at the former home of four-year-old Marc Anthony Bookal, who was killed in December 2009, and the burned out remains of what was once the home of one-year-old Natali Vaquero Mendoza, who perished in a fire there in March.

The procession, led by young children, stopped outside the burned-out home where a young child was killed last month.

After passing along William Street, the procession made its way back to St. Patrick’s school on Liberty Street where Jesus, played by Esteban Guerrero, and the two thieves (ladrones) mounted the crosses for several minutes.