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Visually, the Chilean cultural landscape is full of conflicting signals about the place of Catholicism today. Animitas and shrines dot the landscape, but churches and personal religious style are understated.

Chile is home to a significant number of “official” pilgrimage and devotional sites and also to informal roadside shrines, marking Chile in public ways as a Catholic place.

Before Lent, Catholics in Limache, Chile celebrate the Feast of the Virgin of the 40 Hours with Masses, a fair, and a procession of the Virgin to the city prison for a touching exchange of prayers, songs and gifts among the clergy, community and incarcerated.

Animitas, roadside shrines to the dead, line the roads from desert north to the rainy south of Chile, numbering in the tens of thousands, especially along rural highways and in poor and working-class areas of small cities and towns.

In southern Kerala's seaside villages, religion is an all-encompassing part of life. Most of the parish-centered religious life in these towns takes place in the dark hours, before and after the heat of day. The early morning is punctuated not only by the sound of roosters, but also the sound of singing from various churches.

Though a minority religion, Catholicism has ancient and deep roots in the southern Indian state of Kerala, home to more than 33 million people. Kerala is the heartland for two Syrian-rite Catholic Churches, the Syro-Malabar and the Syro-Malankara Churches, and is home to a large Latin-rite Catholic population. In 2011, according to the Kerala census, Christians constituted 18% of the population, a much higher ratio than is true for India as a whole.1 1K. C. Zachariah, " The Syrian Christians of Kerala: Demographic and Socioeconomic Transition in the Twentieth Century," (working paper, Center

The Syro-Malankara rite is drawn from the same West Syrian tradition as the Maronite Church and the Syriac Catholic Church. Chant is deeply important. "Malankara liturgy is soaked in music."

The Syro-Malabar liturgy, known as the Qurbānā, or Offering, originates in the Chaldean church in Persia. As such, it differs from the liturgy of the Syro-Malankara church , the other Syrian Catholic church in India. The liturgical language of the Syro-Malabar Qurbānā is Malayalam, the language of daily life Kerala. The Syro-Malabar church follows its own liturgical calendar . At Syro-Malabar liturgies, men and women generally separate into different sides of the church. Shoes are left outside of church, and prayer rugs cover the floor. The altar is veiled behind a large red drape that opens

Visually, and in terms of many cultural practices, Syro-Malabar, Syro-Malankara and Latin rite Catholic churches look quite similar. Churches can look baroque, or gothic or contemporary. They similarly feature prominent flag poles for parish feasts. They are often differentiated by oil lamps for burning oil, or for pouring oil over the cross.

St. Mary's Forane Church claims to date to 105 AD and to be the site of the first Marian apparition in world history, with the appearance of the Virgin Mary to three young boys at a spring in 335 AD. In several important ways, it serves as a reminder of the ancientness of Syro-Malabar Christianity in India.