sent from: London, UK. destination: Venice, California, USA

This church in Mexico City is the first “Megachurch” I had ever seen, certainly the first I had been inside. It felt like a cavern, Jesus’ Batcave. The churches I had known until then (cathedrals aside) had been smaller, intimate places. Places where everyone knew each other. I wont say they were comforting, any place where the primary icon is a man nailed to a piece of wood can only comfort the sadistic, and the statues of Mary in the church in Spain, where I was baptised, with her emerging from a black shroud, arms outstretched in supplication, are the stuff of children’s nightmares. But the megachurch was a different, more impersonal animal. To visit their main icons and say prayers you had to travel on a conveyor belt – Disneyland style, and pour out your prayers in the 10 seconds you had as you passed. It was the church’s Walmart to my parish’s Mom-and-Pop store (Mom and Holy Ghost???). Also the food outside the square was very good.