Painting copyright Deborah Sokolove
I grew up in Los Angeles, a city named after the Queen of the Angels.
There, the echoes of Hispanic Catholicism permeate even the most resolutely Protestant, as well as non-Christian, neighborhoods. As part of their historical education, California school-children of all faiths are taken to visit the mission churches founded by Franciscan brothers, and learn local geography as a kind of litany of saints’ names. As a child, I was profoundly affected by both the visual and the spiritual texture of the mission churches I had visited.…