Volunteers make palm leaf crosses.
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Dallas, Tx.
On Thursday night, Margarito “Junior” García crossed the atrium of the parish of San Juan Diego to look for his pastoral companions. Some of them were inside the temple giving service, while a priest celebrated a mass, describes a note published in The Dallas Morning News under the signature of Wendy Selene Pérez.
And it continues: García, deputy director of the hospitality ministry, later returned to a rectangular room that is on the side of the building, carefully opened the first box of a shipment of 7,800 sheets of paper. palmas, still green and fresh, and placed the first handful on a long cold marble table. The time had come for the long-awaited intimate ritual, just for him and his companions: separating and preparing the palm leaves for when the doors were opened for all the parishioners on Sunday of Ramos.
Palm leaves are part of the Holy Week ritual for Catholics, but few know where thousands of fresh leaves are brought to Dallas churches. Even Garcia.
The route of the palmas Until arriving in Dallas it is a whole pilgrimage that begins in Mexico and some places in the United States and then goes to Tulsa, where they are prepared, and then travel to North Texas and other destinations.
In addition to San Juan Diego in northwest Dallas, other churches in the diocese said they pre-order palm fronds each year from a store in Farmers Branch called FC Ziegler Co. Catholic Art & Gifts.
FC Ziegler Company is a family business headquartered in Tulsa, dating back to 1929. It markets a wide variety of religious items such as rosaries, bibles, crucifixes, liturgical ornaments, religious statues, altar bread, wine and leaves of palm for Easter.
The Monday before Sunday of Ramos, Juanita Solís, one of the employees of the premises, received in Farmers Branch a first parcel that arrived from Tulsa with several boxes of palm to deliver them to the churches of Dallas as soon as possible.
“When it is very hot the palmas must be refrigerated so that they are fresh for the Sunday of Ramos“, said Solís,” they cannot be more than two days in our store. “
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