Bishop hits fashion event with Virgin Mary icon

LUCENA CITY—Bishop Emilio Marquez assailed the inclusion of the float of Virgin Mary in a fashion event held here on Monday that was dubbed by its organizers as “Flores de Mayo.”

“The inclusion of Virgin Mary in a nonreligious event, much more of a fashion event is not proper and wrong.

“Not unless the organizers were permitted by the local parish to have the icon during the event,” Marquez said in a phone interview Friday.

The bishop said the Church-sponsored Flores de Mayo would still be held at the end of the month.

Marquez gave his opinion in the midst of controversy surrounding the inclusion of the float of a revered religious icon at the end of the parade of local beauties in regal costumes, designed by local and Manila-based fashion designers, staged on Monday afternoon along major streets here.

Lea Yabe, secretary of Msgr. Leandro Castro, head of Saint Ferdinand Cathedral, said the Church has nothing to do with the event.

The event, dubbed “Flores de Mayo sa Lucena 2011,” was organized by Lucena fashion designer Rholand Roxas.

According to Roxas, the inclusion of the float of Virgin Mary was requested by one of the event sponsors.

He said he ordered an associate to coordinate with the diocese on the inclusion of the religious icon but he was not aware of the result.

He defended the participation of the religious icon, saying there was no outcry when the float of the Virgin Mary was included in the fashion parade held in the city in May last year.

“That issue (of including the float of the Blessed Virgin in the parade) has been with us for so long,” he said.

In the Facebook page of “taga-LUCENA ako” which has listed members here and abroad, Vladimir Agcaoili Nieto, a resident of Lucena and a noted advocate of cultural preservation, chided the organizer for its wrong concept of staging a religious event which has deep roots in the Filipino tradition.

Nieto noted the absence of lighted candles and praying devotees accompanying the icon, which was only followed by a lyre band of elementary students playing “Love Story” instead of the traditional “Dios Te Salve.”

He noted that the icon, though bedecked with flowers, was at the tail end of the parade next to the grand float of Venus Raj, the 4th runner-up in the Ms Universe pageant last year.

Nieto lamented that the people watching the procession left after Raj’s float passed, making the Blessed Virgin Mary look pitiful.

He maintained that “Flores de Mayo is about venerating and praising her (Virgin Mary)” and that “good traditions should be kept as part of our heritage.”

In the same Facebook page, Felino Tañada, chair of the Lucena City Council for Culture and Arts, explained that the affair was “purely a fashion event sponsored by the Quezon Designers Association of the Philippines and was not meant to be a religious exercise.”

“Flores de Mayo” (Flowers of May) or “Santakrusan” is a much-awaited annual Catholic procession in honor of the Virgin Mary. The religious event also commemorates the search of the Holy Cross by Reyna Elena and her son, the newly converted emperor Constantine.

One of the most colorful May-time festival in the country, Flores de Mayo, was introduced by the Spaniards and has since become part of Filipino traditions.

The participants to the procession—local beauties in Filipiniana-inspired dress with dashing escorts in barong Tagalog—follow a traditional arrangement in the procession with the Reyna Elena at the last and escorted by a Constantíno, traditionally a young boy.

Immediately behind the queen and her little escort is a float bedecked with fresh flowers carrying the image of the Virgin Mary, followed by a band that plays the traditional religious hymn “Dios Te Salve.”