WENDOVER, Utah — The hill beyond the walls of the San Felipe Church is dry and desolate, not unlike the ancient hill beyond the walls of Jerusalem.

Below — now as then — the world clutches its glamour and gold. The only decorations on the hill are 14 simple, wooden crosses. But where Calvary in the Old World was a place of death and dismay, the hill in Wendover is a place of reverence and refuge.

It's where members of the local Catholic parish have posted the "Stations of the Cross" — a ritual with 14 points of meditation in Christ's "via dolorosa" (painful path) as he made his way from Jerusalem to Calvary to be crucified.

"This is our Holy Land," says the Rev. German Umana, the parish priest here. "We think of this hill as an extension of our church. It was the project of my predecessor, and we've carried it on."

Currently, the parish is busy building a stone stairway to help people get up the hill. In time, there will be benches and other places where pilgrims can rest and pray. The plan for the moment, however, is to keep the stark, rugged desert texture of the place itself intact.

The 14 Stations of the Cross date back to the fourth century when pilgrims would visit the Holy Land and try to follow the same route Jesus followed to Calvary. They would move from the Garden of Gethsemane through several stops until they reached the pinnacle. They would return home with relics from their trek. Later, those relics ended up in churches, and the various stops on the Jerusalem path were turned into paintings or carvings and hung on the inside walls of local churches.

Each Good Friday, Catholics around the world who couldn't get to the Holy Land could make a "mini-pilgrimage" by following the 14 stations around the walls of their home church.

For many years, the stations remained rather obscure. But in the 18th century, St. Leonard of Port-Maurice, a Franciscan, made it his life's mission to expand the practice. He placed Stations of the Cross in more than 500 churches around Italy. Soon religious communities — like the Jesuits and the Passionists — were using the stations as part of their retreats. By the 19th century, the stations had gone global. Today, in Utah, some of the most impressive and original iconic Christian artwork can be found on the walls of local Catholic churches depicting the various stations.

"We pause at each one," the Rev. Umana says. "Some people kneel and pray. Some meditate. We usually have a scripture and short thought before moving on."

And what are these 14 special moments in the Passion of Jesus?