THE DIOCESE OF ORANGE hosted its third annual Marian Days celebration on July 12 and 13, a celebration on the Christ Cathedral campus that has quickly become the largest of its kind on the West Coast.
As many as 20,000 of the faithful from around the region and the country attended the festival-like environment of outdoor Masses, a procession onto the streets, workshops, dancing, live music and more.
The Diocese’s celebration was modeled after the annual Marian Days of Carthage, Missouri. That pilgrimage-style festival has been in place since 1978, drawing tens of thousands of attendees, particularly Vietnamese Catholics, to the Midwest to honor the Blessed Virgin Mary.
The event is centered around the cathedral’s Our Lady of La Vang Shrine.
The shrine’s centerpiece is a 12-foottall Virgin Mary statue depicting how the Blessed Mother is believed to have appeared before a group of persecuted Vietnamese Catholics in 1798 in a rainforest of Vietnam.
Since its blessing in 2021, the Our Lady of La Vang Shrine has been a major source of reverence, joy and inspiration to Christ Cathedral campus visitors. The shrine hosts monthly Masses and other observances, particularly for Orange County’s large Vietnamese Catholic community.