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[av_heading tag=’h3′ padding=’10’ heading=’Barefoot faithful throng ‘Nazareno’ ‘ color=” style=’blockquote modern-quote’ custom_font=” size=” subheading_active=’subheading_below’ subheading_size=’15’ custom_class=” admin_preview_bg=” av-desktop-hide=” av-medium-hide=” av-small-hide=” av-mini-hide=” av-medium-font-size-title=” av-small-font-size-title=” av-mini-font-size-title=” av-medium-font-size=” av-small-font-size=” av-mini-font-size=”]
BY AFP and ADRIAN STEWART CO
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MANILA – A sea of heaving, towel-waving humanity swarmed a black statue of a cross-bearing Jesus Christ on Tuesday as the Catholic faithful joined the Traslacion, one of the nation’s largest religious events.
In a frenzied display of religious fervor, barefoot men, women and children climbed over heads and shoulders and flung themselves at the centuries-old Black Nazarene that they say performs miracles.
Devotees pulled on stout ropes to move the carriage forward as the procession drew more than half a million people wearing maroon and yellow shirts and waving towels while chanting “Viva” (“Long live”), Manila police said.
The statue was passing through streets of old Manila lined with bystanders on Tuesday afternoon en route to its home in the Quiapo church in a lengthy parade that usually takes 20 hours or more.
“It is really tough climbing to get to the Nazarene. I get squished, and people step on my face. But I have a devotion,” Honey Pescante, a 24-year-old housewife from Bataan province, said.
During a midnight mass at the Quirino Grandstand, Archbishop Luis Antonio Cardinal Tagle urged devotees of the Black Nazarene, locally known as the Poong Itim na Nazareno, to never lose hope.
“One of the messages of the Traslacion is to never lose hope since Jesus Christ is travelling with us,” Tagle said.
He also urged the devotees to remember those who are suffering, hit by recent storms, and affected by the war in Marawi City.
“Let us be one with them. Let us carry them so that they could journey with Christ, who is also carrying our crosses,” he said.
“May our participation in the different activities during the feast lead us in deeply knowing Jesus,” he added. “He is the way to the Father. He is the truth that we’ve been looking for. He is the one who can give us and the society life.”
A devotee for 30 years, 61-year-old Julio Castillo watched from the sidelines of the procession after both his feet were fractured in a motorcycle accident last month, leaving him in a wheelchair.
“I came here because this is my devotion. I hope my family will have good health and a prosperous life, that we will have no illness and I will heal,” he said.
More than 700 people were injured in Tuesday’s procession, one of them with a suspected cracked spine in a fall while attempting to climb onto the carriage, the Philippine Red Cross said.
The annual Traslacion commemorates the first procession transferring the life-sized image of Jesus Christ from a church in Intramuros to the Minor Basilica in Quiapo on Jan. 9, 1767./PN
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