The conciliation policy of Porfirio Díaz is demonstrated by government participation in religious processions from 1876-1911. As if to publicize the state's rapprochement with the church, Díaz and his cabinet members often marched at the head of important religious processions, including the funeral corteges for archbishops of Mexico Pelagio Antonio de Labastida ( 1891) and Próspero María Alarcón ( 1908). As padrinos at the episcopal consecration of Alarcón, Díaz and his father-in-law, Minister of the Interior Manuel Romero Rubio, both participated in the ecclesiastical procession through the streets. Díaz, a mason, and his ministers, such as the anticlerical Romero Rubio, took part in church ceremonies to demonstrate the new alliance between church and state and to reassure the Catholic world that rabid anticlericalism was a thing of the past.

Processions were held in conjunction with a number of church coronation ceremonies during the Porfiriato, especially with the crowning of the Virgin of Guadalupe in 1895. On August 11, 1859, Benito Juárez decreed December 12 an official religious holiday honoring the Virgin of Guadalupe. The first pontifical coronation in Mexico, however, did not take place until February 14, 1886, when the Virgen de la Esperanza (Virgin of Hope) was crowned in Jacona, Michoacón. Perhaps inspired by the exhortations of the papal encyclical Rerum Novarum ( 1891), Catholic leaders in Mexico reinvigorated the centuries-old campaign to coronate Mexico's premiere patrona, the Virgin of Guadalupe. It was the dictator's wife, doña Carmen Romero Rubio, who led the elite in raising $30,000 to purchase an elaborate silver and gold crown for the virgin. In the second week of October, 1895, numerous religious processions lent some sobriety to an atmosphere of merriment and rejoicing. Finally, on October 12, the anniversary of Columbus's discovery of America, the Virgin was crowned before an international audience that included 11 Archbishops, 28 Bishops, and prelates from the United States, Canada, Cuba, and Panama. The coronation ceremony revitalized subsequent celebrations of December 12, gave impetus to the crowning of the Virgin Juan de los Lagos ( 1904), and paved the way for improved relations between the Mexican government and the Vatican. After 30 years without an apostolic delegate in Mexico, Pope Leo XIII sent Archbishop Nicolas Averardi to Mexico City in 1896. In 1910, Pope Pius X proclaimed the Virgin to be the "Reina de los Mexicanos" and the "Celestial Patrona de América Latind".

The nineteenth-century civic procession reached its peak during the Centennial of Mexican Independence celebration in September 1910. On September 15 spectators lined the streets of the Centro Histórico to witness a history parade that surpassed all others. Instead of presenting individual allegorical floats to symbolize distinct eras in Mexican history, organizers devoted entire sections of a panoramic historical cavalcade to represent each period. Thus, the "Epoch of the Conquest" section, which dramatically retold the first encounter of Moteuczoma and Cortós, required a cast of 839 persons. More than 200 indigenous people from San Luis Potosí were brought in to play the part of Moteuczoma's court.