"Actually, it's very beautiful," observed 10-year-old Gladys Avla. "You see different cultures. I like the dress of the African people and Chinese people, the ones from Japan and the Polish men with their swords."

Gladys, along with her mother and little sister, Margarita, were dressed in multi-colored huipil blouses and long skirts to showcase their Mayan ancestry. They wore their black hair in striking to-the-waist braids.

"I think all of us coming together is a great idea," the sixth-grader at St. Mary of the Assumption School in Whittier opined with a smile. "Like the cardinal said, we're all part of the same family of God, and the little differences in color and language, they don't really matter."

Nearby, Scholascica Ebunilo had come with a dozen other Nigerian women who attend St. Eugene Church in Los Angeles. She was wearing a bright blue native dress and matching high headdress.

"This is great!" she said outside the Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels. "This is like bringing all the ethnic groups from all over the world to one place. And like Cardinal Mahony mentioned, we have to love each other and work together because we are the same all over. The only thing is we emigrated from different places. Other than that, we're all God's children."

Tulu Tupou, 35, had come downtown from St. Bridget of Sweden Parish in Van Nuys with her mother, Eleni Lolesio. They, too, were adorned in their native dress, from the Kingdom of Tonga in the South Pacific.

"It's good for us because it brings us together and lets others see our cultures, which is very important to us," she explained. "So it reminds us of our nation and where we came from. And it gets us together with different people, which is really good."

Han Phon from Nativity Parish in El Monte had given the special liturgy's first reading in Vietnamese. "Today was very exciting, really nice," he remarked. "I like everything."

Mass for unity
These five individuals in their traditional ethnic attire - along with hundreds of others - flocked to the Cathedral from communities and parishes across the three-county Archdiocese of Los Angeles, which is the largest and most culturally diverse diocese in the United States. On any given weekend, Masses are celebrated in Aramaic, Cantonese, French, Igbo (Nigerian), Italian, Korean, Lithuanian, Native American, Portuguese, Samoan, Ukrainian and more than 30 other languages.

At the two-hour September 12 mid-morning liturgy - which began with a "parade of nations" with representatives of ethnic communities in colorful dress, followed by a penitential cleansing ritual before the altar by members of the Mayan community - prayers and readings were proclaimed in Vietnamese, Croatian, Arabic, Tagalog, Basque, Indonesian and Native American among other languages.

The Mass was concelebrated by Cardinal Roger Mahony and Auxiliary Bishops Alexander Salazar and Oscar Solis, vicar for Ethnic Ministry. "If you want to know what heaven is going to look like, just look around the Cathedral, because that is very, very true," the cardinal noted at the beginning of his homily. "All peoples are created by our loving God, and all of our sisters and brothers in a special way by our Lord Jesus Christ. Because we are all children of God."

He said today's familiar Gospel of the Good Samaritan illustrated who our neighbor truly is. It's "no accident," he pointed out, that Jesus said it was the despised Samaritan who helped the battered and robbed traveler after a priest of the Old Testament and a Jewish Levite leader went out of their way to avoid the roadside victim.

"This powerful parable by Jesus is one that always attracts our attention because it shows that there is no such thing in the human family as human beings who are better or less than others, who are superior or less, who are gifted or not," he declared. "And the little differences among us such as the color of our skin, our language, our customs, our practices, our songs - all of those are meant to give us a wonderful tapestry of the entire human family.

"So those differences should bring joy and excitement to us because they're all given to us to be appreciated by our brothers and sisters," he said. "The Mass that we are celebrating today is a Mass for unity among all people. Because as we look across our own country and around the world, we still have too many places where people are focused on 'who's different from me' not on 'what are our similarities as brothers and sisters of Christ.'"

Crucial issues
During the rest of this year and 2010, the cardinal stressed there were a couple of crucial issues local Catholics needed to focus their attention on. The first was the ongoing struggle in Congress for comprehensive immigration reform. Scanning the congregation, he noted that many people celebrating their racial and ethnic heritage this morning had probably personally experienced how complex, confusing and lengthy applications for residency and citizenship really are - especially in regards to family reunification when members become separated.

"In many of our communities and diverse cultures, people have experienced those difficulties," he said. "There's got to be a better way to reunify families. I invite us to continue to work together to make sure that the rights of all peoples are upheld; and if someone lacks papers, we need to find a way to help that person gain legal status as a citizen in our country. So that's going to be a big undertaking for us between now and next year's Mass."

Cardinal Mahony said the second major matter for ethnic communities was the upcoming 2010 U.S. Census, noting that it was vital that all people be counted to show the "wonderful unity in diversity" and to help everyone understand the "tremendous richness" in that diversity.

Moreover, he pointed out that federal law specifically forbids census information from being shared "in any way" with immigration authorities. Still, many weary immigrants did not complete census forms a decade ago, fearing legal action leading to possible deportation. The result was an undercount of nearly one million local people, he reported, which resulted in significant cuts in population-based government-funded social welfare programs here.

"Do not be afraid," the cardinal stressed. "The church is going to be urging all of us to make sure that we are counted. Regardless of any legal problems that you might have had in the past, it's vital that everybody be identified and counted this time.

"So I encourage all of our communities to encourage one another to be sure to fill out those census forms. Be part of the greater Southern California area to make sure others recognize who we are - our diversity, our unity.

"And before you leave today, again, turn around and really look at all the different people," he added. "Because as I said before, you're looking at what heaven is going to look like."

A "Festival of Cultures" took place after Mass at the nearby Los Angeles County Mall. It featured performances by the Gallo de Oro Mariachi, Lithuanian Women Vocal Ensemble and Samoan Youth Choir. In addition to exhibits and international food booths, there were traditional dances and songs by Cambodian, Chinese, Croatian, Filipino, Indonesian, Japanese, Mayan, Nigerian, Polish, Tongan and Vietnamese communities of Southern California.