Catholics in search of miracles join Black Nazarene parade

Barefoot men and women in search of miracles hurled themselves above huge crowds in the Philippines Saturday to touch a centuries-old icon of Jesus Christ as one of the world's largest Catholic festivals got under way.

Tens of thousands of devotees swarmed the life-sized Black Nazarene statue as the parade began at daybreak at a park in Manila.

As of 7:30 a.m., the Manila City Risk Reduction and Management Council (MRRMC) estimated the procession's crowd at 1.5 million.

The procession started shortly before 6 a.m. at the Quirino Grandstand in Rizal Park (formerly Luneta).

Shortly before 11 a.m., the procession was in front of the National Museum in Manila.

The church and local authorities said expect the number of people to join the procession to balloon to 15 million, at least five million more than last year's Traslacion attendance.

"The Nazarene our Lord gave meaning to my life," Nino Barbo, a 30-year-old high school dropout with an upper arm tattoo and a metal earring told Agence France-Presse.

The construction worker said he skipped work for the day, for the sixth year in a row, to take part in the parade of the statue, which many Filipinos believe can heal the sick and bring good luck.

Risking life and limb, shoeless participants wearing maroon and yellow shirts clambered over each other to touch the icon with white handkerchiefs or towels as others pulled on a rope to haul the metal float bearing the statue forward.

Gwendolyn Pang of the Philippine Red Cross told radio dzBB that their personnel have served 295 patients, including those who experienced difficulty in breathing.

Pang said one patient suffered from stroke.

Critics say the parade amounts to idolatry, but Church authorities say it is a vibrant expression of faith in one of the world's most fervently Catholic nations.

More than 80 million of the Asian nation's 100 million people consider themselves Catholics.

"The people reach out to it because they have a personal relationship with God," said Monsignor Hernando Coronel, the parish priest of downtown Manila's Quiapo church, the endpoint of the seven-kilometer (four-and-a-half-mile) parade.

"They come to me and say the Lord has performed miracles for them. To the devotees he is for real."

Cloaked in a maroon robe, crowned with thorns and bearing a cross, the Nazarene statue was brought to Manila by Augustinian priests in 1607, decades after the start of Spain's colonial rule.

It was believed to have acquired its color after being partially burnt when the galleon carrying it caught fire on a voyage from Mexico, another Spanish colony at the time. —with Agence France-Presse