The Magdala Center will this year Encounter Magdala 2024 —the “experience” of the Holy Land—to a city that, at the time of its founding and design, aimed to become a “Jerusalem in the Americas,” and which today bears the name of Puebla, two hours southeast of Mexico City.
This is how Puebla’s strong relationship with the Holy Land is explained by Father Juan Solana LC, founder and director of the Magdala Center: “The Franciscan friars who participated in the founding of Puebla decided to lay out the original city according to the model of Jerusalem.”
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“What is currently the Alto neighborhood, which is the oldest area of Puebla, was drawn with the model of Jerusalem, with the Via Dolorosa of Jerusalem and with the holy places of Jerusalem. That’s why there is a Way of the Cross, a painful way. And that is why, from the beginning, according to the intention of the founders of Puebla, they wanted it to be a kind of Jerusalem in the barely discovered Americas.”
The Franciscans are also a source of special brotherhood between the Holy Land and Mexico: May 13, 2024 marked the 500th anniversary of the arrival to American lands of a group of missionaries from the order of Saint Francis of Assisi who today are known as the “12 apostles” of New Spain, as the territory currently known as Mexico was called then.
“The Franciscans are the custodians of the Holy Land and it was Franciscan friars who participated in the founding of Puebla and in the first evangelization of the Puebla area,” recalled Father Solana.
Therefore, an important part of this Encounter Magdala 2024 “It is knowing and walking among the first Franciscan convents in Latin America, which are Tecali and Cuauhtinchan, towns very close to the city of Puebla.”
Due to these elements, Puebla was a special choice as an “alternative place” for this edition of Encounter BringWell, as Father Solana pointed out, “this year in Israel there is a war.”
The founder of the Magdala Center expressed his desire that those who participate in this event can have a “deep experience of what pilgrims experience in the Holy Land, although it will be in a reduced way, but it will be like a small pilgrimage to the Holy Land.”
“The Holy Land team from Magdala came, the volunteers from Magdala came. We are going to have reflections, we are going to share a whole series of motivations, talks, Eucharistic celebrations founded and inspired by the Holy Land,” he highlighted.
“Whoever participates will be as if they were going to the Holy Land, even if it is in a simpler way, and I hope that it will be a very profound experience, an encounter with God, an encounter with ourselves, a renewal of our hope, of our love.” , of our experience of the love of God.”
“We all need that experience of God’s love and it is what we ask God for those who decide to make a pilgrimage to Puebla from July 25 to 28 with Magdala,” he said.
For more information and registration at Encounter Magdala 2024you can enter https://bit.ly/magdalaencounter2024
David Ramos
Graduated in Communication Sciences from the Universidad Privada del Norte in Trujillo, Peru. With more than 12 years of experience in Catholic journalism working at ACI Prensa, I have been based in Mexico since 2018. I have covered Pope Francis’ trips to Ecuador, Paraguay, Mexico, Colombia, Chile, Peru and Panama.