Cecilia Valencia spent the night of September 9 sobbing in her room. She had just returned from a three-day retreat with Familias Unidas en Cristo, a worship group with Our Lady of Guadalupe and Holy Cross churches. “I came back destroyed,” said Valencia, fighting back tears. “I was supposed to come back home happy. People shouldn’t be treated like this.”
The all-female retreat (or encuentro, Spanish for “finding”) took place at Camp Whittier with approximately 80 participants ages 18 and older. Yolanda Gonzales was interested in attending the event but was unable to get time off work. She described the women from Holy Cross who invited her as joyful; they explained the retreat would be “an opportunity to reconnect with ourselves and with God.” The experience for Valencia and others, however, was far from joyful.
It began with what Mireya Higuero described as “almost like a show … like a test.” For their first meal Friday night, the women were offered only a small cup of tea and some bread. “We were scolded for complaining,” she said. The leaders told the women this would be their dinner. When participants complained, the leaders revealed there was more food for the women, but when the participants went to sit down for the meal, they were told they didn’t deserve the food because they had been ungrateful, said Valencia. Higuero was bothered by the experience. “The Lord can give us tests,” she said, but humans should not.
