AS FAR AS THE EYES CAN SEETens of thousands of devotees crowd the Black Nazarene as the revered image is borne through the center of Manila from Rizal Park. It is the faithful’s unshakable belief that joining the procession will shower blessings on them and that all their prayers will be answered. Photographed from the Inquirer’s camera drone by Rem Zamora.
More than 5 million barefoot devotees paraded the centuries-old icon of the Black Nazarene through Manila on Friday, in what Church officials described as a dry run for the visit of Pope Francis to the Philippines next week.
Pope Francis is arriving in Manila on Jan. 15 for a five-day visit that will include a meeting with survivors of last year’s earthquake in Bohol province and Supertyphoon “Yolanda” (international name: Haiyan) in Leyte province.
Organizers of the papal visit are expecting to top the 4-million attendance at the Mass said by St. John Paul II at Rizal Park to cap the World Youth Day celebration and his visit to Manila in January 1995.
“Yes, the Black Nazarene fiesta is a dress rehearsal for the papal visit, especially the culminating Mass at Quirino Grandstand in Luneta, Manila, on Jan. 18,” the Rev. Anton Pascual, head of the papal visit subcommittee on media relations, said in a text message to the Inquirer.
“Perhaps 5 million attendees present is an understatement since Pope Francis’ popularity soared globally as iconic,” said Pascual, who is also the executive director of the charity Caritas Manila.
Different crowd
Pascual said, however, that the Black Nazarene devotees are different from the groups expected to participate in the papal events next week.
“The crowd in the papal visit is more of families, groups, organizations and communities. It’s a mixed crowd. On the other hand, the Black Nazarene crowd are zealous devotees, mostly males,” he said.
Msgr. Jose Clemente Ignacio, rector of Quiapo Church, which houses the Shrine of the Black Nazarene, agreed.
“The papal events and the Black Nazarene procession have different crowds. When Pope John Paul II [visited the Philippines in 1995], the behavior of the crowd was also different,” Ignacio said.
“I [can’t say] which is more orderly . . . different parishioners, different social classes. But the Black Nazarene devotees are [passionate], they’re more expressive of their faith,” he said.
But Lingayen-Dagupan Archbishop Socrates Villegas, president of the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of the Philippines (CBCP), said the Black Nazarene procession could not be considered a dry run for the events during the papal visit.
“No,” Villegas said when asked about it, but did not explain.
Tight security
About 5,000 policemen were deployed for the procession, with 1,000 military personnel on standby, Senior Supt. Jigs Coronel of the Manila police said.
“This is like a mini-papal event in scope,” Coronel said. “We’ll be able to put to test our security plans, crowd control, anticrime measures, emergency and medical response.”
For next week’s papal visit, 40,000 military personnel and 25,000 policemen will be deployed to secure the Pope and keep order at public events in Manila and Leyte.
It had been drizzling since Thursday night, but the chill did not prevent Black Nazarene devotees from staying throughout the midnight Mass celebrated by Ignacio at Quirino Grandstand. Manila Archbishop Luis Antonio Cardinal Tagle delivered the homily.
At 5:30 a.m., Tagle led the opening liturgy for the Black Nazarene procession, which started with a mechanical malfunction.
The pingga, a lever connecting the rope to the andas, or carriage, failed to latch. It took workers one and a half hours to fix the problem and only then could the mother of all processions start to inch its way out of Rizal Park.
Despite the delay, Ignacio said the organizers were happy with the proceedings at the grandstand.
He noted that the transfer of the Black Nazarene icon from the grandstand to the carriage was more orderly compared to previous years when devotees stormed the stage to take the image even as the Mass was held.
Fervent display of devotion
In fervent displays of devotion, huge crowds of barefoot men, women and children followed the Black Nazarene icon as dozens of hardened veterans of the procession pulled the carriage up the main road of Manila’s old quarter for the more than 6-kilometer, all-day, all-night trudge to Quiapo Church.
“Viva el Señor Nazareno (Long live the Lord Nazarene),” the crowds chanted as they twirled and tossed handkerchiefs to men on the carriage to be wiped on the image and thrown back at them. Many believe the icon has miraculous powers and can heal ailments and provide good health and fortune.
“The Lord is my healer,” Lina Javal, 58, declared after waiting in line for hours to kiss the life-size ebony statue back in the park, showing an AFP reporter the healed incision from throat surgery she underwent last month.
‘Extraordinary feeling’
“It’s an extraordinary feeling, it’s like the Holy Spirit is entering my body,” said the clerk from Laguna province.
The mammoth procession, estimated by the Philippine Red Cross at 5.5 million, crawled at a near-snail’s pace on Padre Burgos Street as devotees risked life and limb for the privilege of pulling the fat rope that moved the carriage forward.
Manila city officials and the Red Cross said a man died of a heart attack at the start of the procession and more than 600 others were treated for various injuries as the crowd wriggled past trash-strewn streets in light rain and overcast skies. (See stories in Metro, Page A16.)
Last year, 1,686 devotees were injured in the Black Nazarene procession, fewer than the five-year record 1,710 set in 2013, according to the Red Cross.
There were no deaths during the procession from 2011 to 2014. In 2010, three devotees died and 400 were injured.
Eight in 10 of the Philippines’ 100 million people are Catholics, and the Black Nazarene festival is a display of the vibrance of the religion.
First brought to Manila by Augustinian missionaries from Mexico in 1607, decades after the archipelago was colonized by Spain, the Nazarene statue is believed to have acquired its color after it was partially burned when the galleon carrying it caught fire.
Lifetime vows
Believing in the icon’s miraculous powers, millions of Filipinos make lifetime vows to join the annual procession, many wearing T-shirts emblazoned with an image of Christ crowned with thorns.
“The brand of religious devotion that we see in Filipino Catholism is based on a very strong desire of the majority of our people for a more immediate and direct access to divine help or power,” Manuel Victor Sapitula, a sociology professor at the University of the Philippines, told AFP.
“This is why it is sought through physical touch, sound, bodily experience, or any combination of these,” he added.
“I pray that the Nazarene continues watching my grandson, that he is kept healthy,” 62-year-old laundrywoman Imelda Santiago of Manila told AFP.
She carried the 2-year-old boy, who is blind in his right eye, to the procession, shielding him from the rain with a blanket.
Construction worker Angelo Pamarca, 30, walked an hour to join the procession with his 6-year-old daughter perched on his shoulders.
“I ask the Black Nazarene to forgive my many sins and give me strength to resist temptation,” Pamarca told Agence France-Presse with a mischievous grin, declining to elaborate.
Aileen Amandy, 48, joined the procession with her teenage daughter to seek divine intervention in helping her children complete their studies.
“He always grants my prayers,” Amandy said, crediting the Black Nazarene with healing a son suffering from high fever and convulsions, and keeping another son, a policeman, safe from harm.
CDO feast
The Black Nazarene feast is also held in Cagayan de Oro City, Misamis Oriental province, where a replica of the Black Nazarene housed in the local church contains a piece of the original icon enshrined in Manila’s Quiapo Church.
Police estimated that 120,000 devotees joined the Black Nazarene procession in Cagayan de Oro yesterday.
Among the devotees was 68-year-old Jeremias Nailgo, who traveled all the way from Pagadian City to fulfill his devotion.
Nailgo said he started joining the procession in Cagayan de Oro in 2012, when traveling to Manila for the annual feast became too hard for him.
Devotee Maria Sempron of Bukidnon province carried a small replica of the Black Nazarene to the procession.
“I have been blessed by Jesus Christ, and we shall not forget to give thanks and praise to God,” she said.
In his homily during the vigil for the Black Nazarene at the Pelaez Sports Center, Cagayan de Oro Archbishop Antonio Ledesma urged the devotees to “seek God and his glory.”
Peace in Mindanao
He also asked the devotees to pray for the Philippines and be carriers of peace in Mindanao.
Ledesma said peace with the Bangsamoro would end poverty in Mindanao.
The government and the Moro Islamic Liberation Front signed a peace agreement last March, ending four decades of conflict in Mindanao that killed more than 150,000 people and plunged the island in poverty.
The agreement included the establishment of a new Bangsamoro autonomous region whose government would have powers to develop and manage the regional economy, including bringing in foreign investment.
There was also light rain during the Black Nazarene procession in Cagayan de Oro.
‘Trash-lacion’
Supt. Lemuel Gonda, director for operations of the Cagayan de Oro City police, said the procession started at 4 a.m. No one was injured and there were no untoward incidents.
In Manila, the millions of devotees who followed the icon of the Black Nazarene to Quiapo left little for Metropolitan Manila Development Authority (MMDA) street sweepers to do.
“Generally, the trash is lesser this year compared to [last year]. We have collected about four truckloads [of trash] from Quirino Grandstand to City Hall since 1 p.m.,” said Francis Martinez, head of the MMDA Metro Parkway Clearing Group (MPCG).
“The city government also designated dump trucks [that] followed our street sweepers to immediately collect the trash they gathered,” Martinez said.
The environmental group EcoWaste Coalition, however, remained unsatisfied, pointing out that despite reminders to keep the environment clean, the devotees left trash—newspapers, leftover food, food containers and plastic bags—in Rizal Park and on the route of the procession.
Zero waste campaigner Tin Vergara called it “trash-lacion,” a play on “traslacion,” or bearing the Black Nazarene image from the park to its shrine in Quiapo Church.
Vergara clarified, however, that the term was not intended to belittle the sacrifices of the devotees, but to remind them that littering defiles the environment and undermines their devotion to the Black Nazarene, whose intercession they seek for protection from calamities, injuries, diseases and other misfortunes. With reports from Maricar Brizuela in Manila; Bobby Lagsa, Inquirer Mindanao; AFP, AP and Inquirer Research
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