Faith combined with planning produced a “miracle” of sorts: The procession went faster, the andas didn’t break down, the street sweepers went quickly into action, and the 200-year-old tradition showed no signs of fading.
Hundreds of thousands of mostly barefoot Roman Catholic devotees joined a raucous procession through the streets of the Philippine capital Wednesday in an annual ritual to demonstrate faith and seek miracle cures for illnesses and a good life.
Devotees of the Black Nazarene broke through the barricades at the Quirino Grandstand Wednesday.
Amid the religious frenzy comes a word of caution.
Too much nonsense has been said about Catholics being passive in worship.
From Quirino Grandstand (Rizal Park), right Katigbak Drive thru P. Burgos, left Taft Ave. (P. Burgos) thru MacArthur Bridge, right Palanca, thru under Quezon Bridge, left Quezon Blvd., right Arlegui, right Fraternal, right Vergara, left Duque de Alba, left Castillejos, left Farnecio, right Arlegui, left Nepomuceno, left Aguila, right Carcer, right Hidalgo thru Plaza del Carmen, left Bilibid Viejo thru Puyat, left Guzman, right Hidalgo, left Barbosa, right Globo de Oro thru under Quezon Bridge, right Palanca, right Villalobos thru Plaza Miranda to Quiapo Church.
A day before the Feast of the Black Nazarene, police said they have not monitored any security threats but maintained that they will not hesitate to jam cell-phone signals should there be a need.
No direct threats have been monitored as authorities gear up for the Feast of Black Nazarene on Wednesday, the military said on Monday.
Millions of Catholic devotees risked their lives joining the Black Nazarene procession, which the government, if it had its way, would have prevented because of a bomb threat.
For those who cleaned up after the Black Nazarene feast in Manila on Tuesday, the only “terror” they faced came not from bomb-carrying radicals but from tons of garbage left behind by a record eight million devotees.
In the wake of this year’s procession of the Black Nazarene of Quiapo, which entered the books as the longest in the history of the 17th century icon, a Catholic priest in charge of the procession admitted that the devotees displayed an “excess of fanaticism that needs to be corrected.”
More than 1,000 individuals were given medical attention by the Philippine Red Cross during the Feast of the Black Nazarene.
The military’s alert status on terror threat remains in Metro Manila after the celebration of the Feast of the Black Nazarene, Defense Secretary Voltaire Gazmin said in an interview with 990 AM Radyo Inquirer on Tuesday morning.
