.Procession.
 
The Parish of Holy Cross has many old traditions: not least amongst these is the annual June Corpus Christi Procession. Up until the 1960s May Processions were also held in honour of Our Lady with her statue, bedecked with flowers, being borne round the village by the Children of Mary. However, the Procession to celebrate the Feast of the Body of Christ was always the greater event. Although now relatively diminished, the Procession is still held every year. Where it used to be held around the whole village, for practical reasons, not least the increase in road traffic, it now takes place through only one part of the village in any given year. The origins of the Croy Corpus Christi Procession are now lost in our history, but they go back about seventy years, at least as far as the 1930s, shortly after Croy village came into being. The day of the Procession (always a Sunday) was one when distant family and friends found reason to visit Croy. It was and is an occasion of devotion, good cheer, family solidarity, companionship, the brightness of newly cultivated gardens and colourful outdoor-altars with floral decoration.
 
Now much shorter than in the past, the Procession would wend its way, perhaps about a mile long, through every street. Benediction would be given at a central point and then again, back at the Church, normally outdoors. According to tradition the Parish Silver Band would lead the Procession, playing sacred music at frequent intervals. Following the Band would come the various groupings, confraternities and sodalities, proceeding in orderly fashion about four deep, with flanking stewards to control the rate of progress.
 
There would be the new communicants, immaculately turned out, the school-children, the Boys' Guild, St. Bernadette's Guild, the Children of Mary in their blue cloaks and white veils, and the Women's and Men's Sacred Heart Confraternities. Somewhere in the huge line would be the Sacred Host in a place of honour, borne with reverence by priest (or Archbishop sometimes) under a handsome canopy which would be carried by four stalwart men in sashes and white gloves. The Rosary would be recited and there would always be much Band-led hymn singing, especially at Benediction. The sound of massed voices would rise to the heavens from a thousand throats.
Even if the Procession is now a slightly more restricted affair, it is nonetheless still an uplifting and life-enhancing experience drawn from a deep well of ancient Catholicism and it is still typically Croy.