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Every year, one million people descend on an otherwise isolated, whitewashed town on the edge of a national park in southern Spain for a grand annual pilgrimage to celebrate Nuestra Señora del Rocío. The feast culminates in a wild, raucous procession of her statue into the plazas, beginning in the deep of the night following Pentecost.

Because Chuukese culture is as communal as it is, Catholic life centers on shared activities, not on solitude. Many pray with repetition of the Rosary, often at night as a family.

Though the islands of Micronesia are geographically isolated from the rest of the world, flights are relatively infrequent and visitors few, and Micronesian cultures focus so much on family cohesion, Micronesians have migrated in surprisingly large numbers.

Rosary and devotion to Mary are important Chuukese Catholics. On the Outer Island of Pollap, Mary is a strong role model for women.

Well-attended Advent and Lenten reconciliation services, a culturally important family reconciliation ritual that is incorporated into funeral novenas, and a traditional, communal practice of reconciliation in the aftermath of violence suggest how important reconciliation is in Chuukese culture.

In the Chuuk Lagoon, the dead are often buried very close to the house, rather than in separate cemeteries. Funerals are major, multi-night events organized and attended by the whole community, and by relatives from abroad if possible.

Respect, the paramount value in Micronesian society, is communicated by deference: by speaking quietly and often lowering one’s eyes; by trying not to “stand above” another; or even trying not to stand out from the crowd. So it is at worship.

Lineage groups, not the Western nuclear family, have long been the most determinative family structure in Chuuk. Respect, deference and modesty are core cultural values. Respect is demonstrated through distance, deference, and silence.

Easter is the most important feast for Palestinian Christians, and is celebrated in a particularly Palestinian way. In the Christian village of Taybeh, Holy Week is a time of unity.

Funerals serve a highly valued communal function, as the ritual occasion designed in significant part to make families put aside differences and come together in reconciliation.