Montevideo, Uruguay (Wednesday, December 21, 2016, Gaudium Press) Aiming to stop the de-Christianization of the Christmas celebrations, the Archdiocese of the Uruguayan capital has launched a campaign titled: “Christmas with Jesus”.
One of the items of this evangelizing campaign is the vast distribution of a poster made out of cloth, which is called “balconera”, (from balcony in Spanish) because it is intended to be on display at the balconies or windows of any sort of building. Having a white and yellow background, it portrays the Nativity scene which is presented at the Cathedral of Montevideo.
The initiative has been a tremendous success requiring several editions of the “balconera” totalizing 24.000 copies, the first edition being just 5000. If it was a phenomenon of the social media it could have been said that it has become “viral”, as Pablo Melgar, from the newspaper El Pais, commented. According to the archdiocese no campaign has been so popular as this one.
Cardinal Daniel Sturla, the archbishop of Montevideo, who is at the heart of this initiative, met with Pope Francis last November and the Pope agreed to be taken on a photo with a “balconera”. Curiously, the photo was taken by the Cardinal himself.
Homes, schools, stores, churches are some of the places where the poster can be seen. Even at the front gate of the residence of the Uruguayan president, Tavare Vazquez, member of the socialist party, there is a “balconera”.
This is especially significant due to the fact that Uruguay is considered as the least religious country of Latin America. Maybe this is not true any longer.
Gaudium Press (ANH)
