2026 Stations of the Cross: Overcoming Racism

Hosted at Holy Cross Durham for all of the Diocese of Raleigh!

Fridays During Lent

• 6PM - Lenten Meal Service
• 6:30PM - Racism Topic (live streamed)
• 7PM - Stations(live streamed)
  

Racism has been a problem in our country almost since its founding. Of late there have been key points that show how bad things still are today.  This gives rise to the need to respond, of course in this diocese, in a loving way.  We provide here in the next few paragraphs background to the history of responses within the diocese including what brings us to this event series this year. Our hope is that we initiate a response to address racism. To further help you this year 2026, we are adding a presentation topic. These presentations are meant to share personal racism experiences and to give you insight into things you may do to help you overcome the sin of racism.

Racism concerns in the diocese after George Floyd's death in 2020 peaked. One concern was that the communication from the diocese did not say enough. However about a year or more afterwards  the Bishop’s staff started racism training with a consultant from Georgia. While the programming was good the participation didn’t reach enough of the folks that the staff had hoped it would reach. Further that training only lasted a year or so. Fast forward to 2024 and we had gone years without any programming to address racism. So a request was made early in the year to have the diocese do regular annual bias based awareness activities that could over years lead to training that really addresses racism. The suggestion was to have each parish in the diocese utilize the USCCB(United States Conference of Catholic Bishops) Stations of the Cross - Overcoming Racism document on Fridays during lent. Bishop Zarama suggested we start at Holy Cross and utilize the Diocesan Communications Office to reach the rest of the diocese.   That lands us where we are today our second year conducting Stations of the Cross - Overcoming Racism for the diocese. Holy Cross and other parishes in the diocese have utilized this document to conduct stations of the cross before. We are happy this year to be offering this to the diocese! And we have one community that will also be using this document on Friday at their church.

So why do this bias awareness regularly? Simply to help us overcome the sin. We can’t be the best diocese in the world and continuously perpetuate this sin. Pope Francis called racism out as a sin. So we are doing our part to help each individual in the diocese take a positive step on their journey to heaven. If we can eradicate this sin we help everyone take a step closer to the ultimate goal of heaven! 

So what led to this Stations of the Cross - Overcoming Racism(SOTC:OR) document being approved by the US Bishops? Well as stated Racism has been a problem and the US Bishops a year before the Stations of the Cross: Overcoming Racism document was approved launched an initiative called Open Wide Our Hearts(OWOH).There is more detail about both of these resources on the USCCB website. Our hope is that not only will we adopt this stations of the cross document throughout the diocese but that we will also embrace the OWOH document. This is a journey and we have to start and continue taking steps to improve in order to reach our ultimate goal. Given we as Catholics believe in community, let’s all work together to change how we treat our differences! At its beginning Christianity was extended beyond just the Jews to all races! So as Christians we are called to embrace each other without this sin! 

How can you start this journey at your parish? Well you are taking the first step - attending one of the events at Holy Cross. We took the opportunity to embrace several races in our inaugural year of utilizing this version of stations of the cross for the diocese. Our hope was that in future years your parish will do the same and conduct stations of the cross for all races on Fridays during lent. Again in our second year we have seen this already happen. The Philipino community is using this SOTC:OR document on Fridays. When you attend one of our events this year be sure to check-in(scroll down and use the 3rd column in the table to check-in for the specific event you are about to attend/view if you haven't already)  so Bishop Zarama can see who is attending. After attending/viewing be sure to give us feedback(for each event you attend/view use column 4 in the table below to provide feedback)  so we can also provide that insight to Bishop Zarama as to how to best move forward with our diocesan journey.  Below in the table  at the bottom of the page are the communities that we have invited to Holy Cross for the 6 Fridays of Lent 2026.