Reality: Baptizing a Dead Baby
Reality: Baptizing a Dead Baby February 11, 2015 Vespers was just about over. Sweat ran down my cassock and surplice in rhythmic drops while black-veiled widows droned responses to my vesicles. Ave Maria gratia plena... on and on. Only a dozen or so can create a concrete cutting sound grinding your brain. The sweet scent of burning bee's wax candles offering up their gray smoke combined with the widow's chanting left me distinctly light-headed. " Just another night at church service", I thought. All that changed in an instant with a loud thump as the two big wooden doors of Iglesia Católica. Santa María de Guadalupe (Tempoal de Sánchez, Veracruz) flew open at the back. Tempoal, the name of the town, means 'place of the toads' in Wastek. Lightly armed men began making their way toward the altar where I stood, clerically robed and officiating at the service. Such a sight is a daily event in this lit...