THE country’s biggest mass gathering – the annual Traslacion of the Black Nazarene from the Luneta Park to its shrine, the Minor Basilica of the Black Nazarene in Quiapo – is still three months away, January 9, 2021, but Manila Mayor Francisco “Isko Moreno” Domagoso has started considering the problems it will present in the continuing COVID-19 pandemic.
The image, carved in the 16th century in Mexico, came to the Philippines in 1606 and was housed in several churches in Intramuros. The Traslacion commemorates the transfer of the image in 1787 from the Church of San Nicolas de Tolentino of the Agustinian Recollects in Intramuros to its new home, the Church of the Camisa, now the Quiapo Church.
The Traslacion has become the biggest religious procession in the country, with hundreds of thousands – millions, according to some police and Quiapo church officials – joining the procession or lining its route. Barefoot devotees in brown garments struggle to touch the image or even just its carroza, believing in its miraculous healing powers, as it slowly makes its way from the Luneta to Quiapo from dawn to near midnight.
In this day of the COVID-19, the Traslacion is simply out of the question. Attendance in churches in Metro Manila continues to be limited to 10 percent of capacity to this day, seven months after the start of the lockdowns.
Thus Mayor Isko last weekend said he would have to meet with Quiapo church officials as he cannot possibly issue a permit for the Traslacion on January 9, 2021 – just as Holy Week last April passed without the traditional Visita Iglesia, when thousands of Catholics visit seven churches on Holy Thursday.
There is one other Filipino tradition that may not be allowed this year – the Simbang Gabi, a novena of predawn masses from December 16 to Christmas Eve on December 24, when thousands of Catholics flock to churches all over the country, spilling out into the churchyards for lack of space inside. This is one tradition that Filipinos now living in many other countries have brought with them.
There is yet no end in sight for the COVID-19 pandemic, since it emerged in China in December, 2019. There have now been over 35 million infections and over a million deaths around the world and hope is pinned on vaccines now in their final testing processes in many countries. The earliest of these may be ready by December, but most will win approval only in 2021 and it will take months for the billions of people around the world to get it.
In the meantime, we must face a Christmas like no other in the past. And we must do without the massive procession of the Black Nazarene in January. We can only focus now on surviving the COVID-19 and on planning for recovery that will take many nations, including ours, years to accomplish.
