Weeping followers dressed in white and bearing palm leaves crowded the streets, as family and close friends bore a gold-plated coffin to the denomination’s huge Guadalajara temple.
Guadalajara Mayor Ramiro Hernandez and Tonala Mayor Jorge Arana headed the procession.
The coffin was buried in the crypt of the luxuriant temple, the focal point of the neighborhood and an easily recognizable structure on the Guadalajara skyline. Gold letters marked the name of the deceased leader and the dates of his birth and death.
For the week following Joaquin’s death, his body lay in repose at the entrance of the temple as followers filed by to pay respects to their spiritual leader. Messages of condolence were issued by various political and spiritual leaders. Although the relationship between Luz del Mundo and the Catholic Church has historically been strained, Cardinal Jose Francisco Robles Ortega, the archbishop of Guadalajara, was among those who sent a personal letter of condolence to the family. Jalisco Governor Aristoteles Sandoval and Arturo Diaz de Leon, director of Religious Affairs at Mexico’s Interior Ministry, even made personal appearances at the temple.
Joaquin Flores will be succeeded by his fifth son, Naason Joaquin Garcia, 45, who announced that he had received a divine message calling him to lead the church.
The new church leader said that he had sought counsel from God to help with the pain of bereavement when suddenly he received the message.
“I heard a powerful blaring voice, like a tide of rushing water,” he told the congregation. “It asked, ‘why are you asking me to comfort you? You must comfort my people!’ I thought it was someone playing a joke on me but there was nobody there and I was surprised and scared. I fell to my knees. The voice said, ‘Naason, you are the Head of this ministry.’ I told him, ‘no, not me.’ I said that when my father died I already had a destiny but he told me, ‘no, your destiny is with me and with these people that I entrust to you.’”