St. John Fisher College’s Office of Campus Ministry and Latino Student Union will celebrate Our Lady of Guadalupe on Dec. 10, two days before her feast day, with a Mass, lecture and dedication of a portrait in her honor.
The events, which are free and open to the public, will be held in the Hermance Family Chapel of St. Basil the Great. Our Lady of Guadalupe is the patron saint of Mexico and the Americas and the patroness of the Basilian Fathers’ Missions.
The 10 a.m. Mass will be celebrated by Father Ricardo Ramirez, CSB, bishop emeritus of the Diocese of Las Cruces, N.M. The dedication of a painting by iconographer Minhhang K. Huynh will follow at 1:30 p.m. Huynh emigrated to America from Vietnam in 1985, and later graduated from SUNY Geneseo. Currently, she works through the Abbey of the Genesee in Piffard under the guidance of Abbot John Eudes.
The Latino Student Union commissioned the painting in honor of longtime English professor Father Leo Hetzler, CSB, who served the college from 1959 until his retirement in 1994. He died on May 18 at the age of 91.
Following the dedication, Bishop Ramirez and Timothy Matovina will present the lecture “Power, Piety and Periphery: Guadalupe and Juan Diego in the New World.” Matovina is codirector of the Institute for Latino Studies and professor of theology at the University of Notre Dame, where he also serves as chair of the History of Christianity in the Department of Theology.
