In an unprecedented decision, the retail chains Falabella, Ripley and Paris announced that they will reopen their doors this Good Friday, breaking with a tradition that has historically been respected in the country. The measure has generated a strong reaction from unions and from the Church, which consider it a violation of the spiritual and communal meaning of the date.

In response, the Church of Santiago, through its archbishop, Cardinal Fernando Chomali, issued a strongly worded statement after holding a meeting with representatives of the unions of these companies. The text expresses the workers’ deep sorrow and questions the company’s decision, noting that it will prevent thousands of employees from participating in Holy Week religious celebrations, also affecting family life and the communitarian experience of a day considered sacred by a large part of the population.

“The opening of these stores on Good Friday deeply wounds our soul, because it violates the religiosity of a people and its traditions,” the statement says.

The Church emphasizes that Good Friday is a legal holiday in Chile precisely because the State recognizes this celebration as a common good: A time for contemplation, spiritual communion, and the transmission of values that give meaning to individual and social life. In light of this, the retailer’s decision is presented as another expression of the market’s encroachment on the symbolic and restful spaces that make up the country’s cultural fabric.

A development model under stress

The ecclesial denunciation goes beyond the defense of the holiday. What is being questioned is a model of development focused exclusively on the logic of consumption and productivity, which ignores the spiritual, emotional, and communal dimensions of the human being. According to the statement, ‘the prosperity of a society is not measured solely in economic terms, but also in its spiritual, familial, and social wealth.’

It also makes a direct call to the companies involved to reconsider the measure, reminding them that work is at the service of the person and not the other way around, and that imposing a workday on a day of profound religious significance constitutes a form of cultural uprooting and weakening of collective common sense.

Union leaders have also expressed their frustration, as the business decision was made unilaterally, without prior dialogue, which demonstrates, in their words, a concerning lack of sensitivity toward the human conditions of those who sustain the operations of these large companies.

Faith as a common good

In a Chile undergoing a cultural transformation, where the boundaries between the religious and the secular are being reconfigured, the statement from the Church of Santiago raises a fundamental question: What place does faith occupy today as a common good not only as just a private practice?

The defense of Good Friday is not, in this case, a mere defense of the rite, but of the right of people to live their spirituality in community, without being forced to choose between their work and their faith. In times of talk about corporate social responsibility, the ecclesial statement calls on major economic players not to contribute to the fragmentation of family and social life for the sake of marginal profits.

‘The economic benefit of one day will come at the cost of a significant loss of social cohesion,’ the statement concludes, recalling that companies not only generate material goods, but also symbolic conditions for coexistence.

Just days before another Holy Week, this controversy opens a larger debate about the limits of the market in a society that still harbors, in its deepest soul, signs of religiosity and shared values that should not be sacrificed on the altar of consumption.

This story was originally published March 21, 2025, on Religion Digital.