Merry Christmas from Guam's New Ordinariate Community

The Santa Cruz (Holy Cross) Community in Guam has just planted deeper roots into the Pacific island with the launch of regular Ordinariate Masses. 

Santa Cruz's Masses are held at 7pm on the Saturday Vigil at the Father Dueñas Memorial School Chapel in Chalan Pago, Guam.

According to the Our Lady of the Southern Cross newsletter, the Santa Cruz community has enjoyed the support of the Latin Rite Archdiocese of Guam, with some Catholic priests learning how to celebrate Mass with Divine Worship: the Missal with the blessing of Archbishop Michael Byrnes.

When the U.S. seized Guam from the Spanish Empire after the 1898 Spanish-American War, Episcopalian and other Protestant missionaries came in its wake forming sizeable congregations in the majority Catholic country. Today, approximately 18% of Guam belongs to a Protestant congregation. The Ordinariate provides another pathway for these Christians, either as individuals or congregations, to come into full communion with the Catholic Church.

While Guam is a U.S. territory, the Santa Cruz community falls under the jurisdiction of the Ordinariate of Our Lady of the Southern Cross, which serves Australia, Japan, and other Pacific Rim countries, rather than under that of the U.S. and Canada-based Ordinariate of the Chair of St. Peter.   

The OLSC Newsletter has many more fascinating details about the Santa Cruz community's beginnings, particularly when a lay association approached OLSC with a request to bury deceased homeless and unclaimed persons with Ordinariate Use liturgies. 

Read on here. 

And make sure to check out Santa Cruz Community in Guam on the ACS Map.

Pictures courtesy of Adrian Cruz, the administrative contact for the Santa Cruz Community in Formation.