This Fourth of July, many American families commenced the holiday’s festivities by attending local patriotic parades.
But among the red, white, and blue decorations, parishioners of St. Leo the Great Church in Fairfax infused the annual Fairfax Independence Day Parade with a little evangelization and a large statue of its patron.
This is the second year St. Leo parishioners have constructed and displayed a float in the Independence Day Parade.
Some 15 parishioners, including several girls from the parish American Heritage Girls troop, gathered June 29 to prepare the float. Similar to last year’s float, this one featured a larger-than-life paper mache statue of the parish patron. St. Leo’s hand is raised, defending the right to religious freedom.
Last year, the St. Leo statue faced a statue of Attila the Hun, calling to mind how St. Leo historically petitioned Attila the Hun to halt his invasion of Italy, sparing Christians from further harm. This year, float coordinator Patrick Murray said the statues will be repurposed for a different scene, with St. Leo facing a statue of a soldier bearing a rifle.
“We stored them after the parade and then we brought them out again, and we have two characters that we repurpose.
“It took about a month because it’s paper mache. You have to sort of wait to let it dry and then build more,” Murray said.
A sign perched atop the float paraphrased a quote from the Declaration of Independence: “All men are endowed by their Creator … we solemnly declare these united colonies ought to be free, with a firm reliance on the protection of Divine Providence.”
AHG member Genevieve Zink carefully painted blue words on a sign as she reflected on her love for the patriotic parade: “I like seeing (the parade) and participating in it and looking at other floats.”
The float won second place in the parade, much to the delight of the parish.
St. Leo parishioner Isabel Osinaga painstakingly created the paper mache heads for the statues. She hoped the float would be an invitation for fallen-away Catholics to come home. “If they see us with the float … then this might do something good for them,” she said.
Deacon Andrew Lewandoski, transitional deacon at St. Leo, said that he had heard that the Fairfax parade was among the largest in the state. “I’m just really thrilled to be out there with the parishioners in public, representing the Catholic Church here in Fairfax.”
Father James R. Joseph, parochial vicar of St. Leo, said that after many years of study and formation at St. Charles Borromeo Seminary in Wynnewood it was rewarding to participate in the life of the Arlington diocese.
“We’re so close to the nation’s capital, and we’ve got so much in the way of national American identity very close to us, and we’re including a lot of that in the float,” he said. “It goes to show how far we’ve come as Catholics in America, that we’re part of the country. We’re citizens of the country and we love it, but we’re proud of being Catholic and we’re going to carry that forward.”
