By Jessica Easthope
In the basement of Our Lady of Fatima Church in East Elmhurst, Queens, 14-year-old Gianlucas Goncalves Cunha doesn’t break character. His conviction comes from within. He’ll need it to play Jesus in the church’s Via Crucis — a reenactment of the Stations of the Cross.
“I accepted the role. I’m really excited for the production. I hope it goes really well. And I’m just really glad about it,” Goncalves Cunha said.
Despite having the lead role, Goncalves Cunha is missing something.
“My faith journey is a little bit complicated,” he said. “So when I started taking my faith seriously, I was like, I need to go to church because it’s really important. Before that, I hadn’t gone to church since I was in the Dominican Republic.”
He’s waiting to receive First Communion and Confirmation — sacraments he didn’t realize he needed until he watched “The Passion of the Christ” last Easter.
“Even though it wasn’t close to the pain that he really felt, it did something to me,” he said. “It made me emotional and it made me take it way more seriously.”
A freshman in high school, Goncalves Cunha is growing up in the age of social media. He admits that before he began the Order of Christian Initiation of Adults, or OCIA, he strayed from the faith he was baptized into. But he knew enough to find out the truth for himself.
“So there’s this dude on social media, he says all these things like Catholics worship Mary, which is stereotypical and isn’t true at all,” Goncalves Cunha said. “We venerate Mary. We give her something called hyperdulia, which is a Greek term for the highest level of veneration. Social media can either break your faith or it can help you. So you have a platform where you can search for the truth and find what you should believe in.”
Gianlucas still has one year of OCIA until he can receive his sacraments at next year’s Easter Vigil — but his passion hasn’t wavered.
“I’m really looking forward to actually take the Eucharist, which is the literal body and blood of Christ,” he said. “And maybe even bring new people to Catholicism so that they can know who created them and who will save them. And that’s Jesus. And I’m really excited for that.”