Seventy-nine percent (79%) of Filipinos are Catholic, yet some surveys say only 38% of Filipino Catholics currently attend weekly Sunday Mass. In contrast, the annual Nazareno procession, held yearly on January 9, continues to attract millions of devotees. This year, there were an estimated 9.6 million participants, 2 million more than in 2020. The 2026 traslacion (procession) accompanying the 420-year-old image of the dark-skinned Christ lasted 31 hours, longer than in previous years.
The devotion has spread all over the world, wherever one finds Filipinos. Examples include the first Filipino Catholic Center in Anaheim, California, and a parish in Artesia, California, that recently brought in a life-size replica of the original image for its Filipino parishioners.
Blessed mourners
Here in Manila, the most fervent devotees tend to come from less-privileged backgrounds. Many, if not most, join the annual procession praying for physical healing, job security, or family safety. Many become devotees in response to experiences of hopelessness or hardship within their families. They offer their commitment to walk with the Black Nazarene (panata) as a sacrifice, hoping the Poon (what devotees call the dark-skinned Jesus) will grant their petitions.
Some writers have accused devotees of being superstitious or simplistic. These voices maintain that the devotees' understanding resembles the pre-Christian view that offering blood sacrifice to a deity was necessary to appease the heavens in exchange for divine favors. Others might even accuse them of Pelagian tendencies, given their belief that their sacrifice will "convince" God to save them from disease, penury, and danger.
However, there is wisdom from the early Church (and its current teaching) about sacrifice, particularly pertinent in Lent:
As it is written, ‘Our God is a consuming fire’ (Hebrews 12:24); so we also must kindle the divine fire in ourselves through tears and hard work” (St. Syncletica of Alexandria).
One study describing how low-income Filipina women understand and experience the Black Nazarene devotion shows remarkable similarity to this insight:
At first, the devotees recalled [difficult life] experiences with sorrow because of the problems they had to endure, but as they began to talk about their devotion, their tone changed into eagerness and delight, eventually seeing it as a way in which they were being drawn to the Black Nazarene, who became their savior. (Sto. Domingo, et. al., 68)
These excerpts seem to echo this promise from the Sermon on the Mount, “Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted.”
The Catechism notes how the heart and the exterior actions should be intertwined.
1430 Jesus' call to conversion and penance, like that of the prophets before him, does not aim first at outward works, "sackcloth and ashes," fasting and mortification, but at the conversion of the heart, interior conversion. Without this, such penances remain sterile and false; however, interior conversion urges expression in visible signs, gestures and works of penance.
"Popular" devotion
Priests and bishops, too, have expressed reluctance in regard to what is known as "popular devotion," -- with the word "popular" referring here to its root-meaning of "the general public." Examples of popular devotion include things like the Black Nazarene devotion, and many other, often local, devotions, especially in countries with long Catholic histories.
There are those who fear that attention to these festivals and figures distracts the faithful from valuing and participating in the sacraments, especially the Holy Eucharist. The growing yearly participation in the Nazarene’s traslacion, coupled with the declining Mass attendance across the country, suggests that this reluctance might be justified.
Nevertheless, Church teaching prefers to view traditions, such as those surrounding the Black Nazarene, with hope. In the apostolic exhortation Evangelii Nuntiandi, Pope Paul VI had this to say about the evangelizing value of popular devotions:
It manifests a thirst for God which only the simple and poor can know. It makes people capable of generosity and sacrifice even to the point of heroism, when it is a question of manifesting belief. It involves an acute awareness of profound attributes of God: fatherhood, providence, loving and constant presence. It engenders interior attitudes rarely observed to the same degree elsewhere: patience, the sense of the cross in daily life, detachment, openness to others, devotion. By reason of these aspects, we readily call it "popular piety," that is, religion of the people, rather than religiosity.
Pastoral charity must dictate to all those whom the Lord has placed as leaders of the ecclesial communities the proper attitude in regard to this reality, which is at the same time so rich and so vulnerable. Above all one must be sensitive to it, know how to perceive its interior dimensions and undeniable values, be ready to help it to overcome its risks of deviation. When it is well oriented, this popular religiosity can be more and more for multitudes of our people a true encounter with God in Jesus Christ. (Evangelium, Nuntiandi, P. Paul VI, 48.)
In this excerpt, the Holy Father admitted that, although these devotions can be misguided, they possess a spiritual richness and opportunities for a “true encounter with God in Jesus Christ.”
Why the Black Nazarene devotion is growing
Msgr. Clemente Ignacio, a former pastor of the Quiapo church (where the original image of the Black Nazarene is kept), shared Pope Paul VI’s perspective on popular devotion. Msgr. Ignacio once declared that he believed the devotion is growing because devotees really do see the Lord in the Black Nazarene:
So, why are devotees growing? Fr. Tony de Castro, SJ was right when he said, “It is the Black Nazarene!” I would like to express what the disciples of Jesus said when he appeared to them after the resurrection: “It is the Lord!” It is the Lord who is alive and present in the Shrine at Quiapo! It is the Lord who does all these miracles and answers the prayers of those who come to Him! It is the Lord who has that special affection to the poor and the weak who come to Him in Quiapo! It is the Lord who appears to people in dreams or calls them through events in their lives so that He could embrace them and save them! It is the Lord who loves and builds this Church in Quiapo! This is the experience of the devotees and we could understand why the people come to Quiapo and why some are even willing to risk their lives in such a dangerous procession.
The priest's reference to the danger and risk of life is no small matter. With so many millions packed into the space around the image, people have sometimes been crushed.
Professor Michael Jason Liberatore, chairperson of the theology department of Ateneo de Manila, confirms Msgr. Ignacio’s observation:
The statue itself, as articulated by many devotees, is not God but rather is a means of touching the transcendent God and encountering God’s mercy. The experience of touching the statue, of the feeling of peace and mercy that comes with the touch, of the lightness in their hearts are not so much about the request as the feeling of encounter. The feeling of peace and healing is something received (that) reflects the understanding and empathy of the Black Nazarene in the devotees’ journey through the difficulties of life.
Msgr. Ignacio and Prof. Liberatore both concur that even if devotees come to the Nazarene because of physical and material needs, these requests co-exist with a genuine, and perhaps deeper, yearning to touch and encounter the actual Jesus. Theirs is the “thirst for God that only the poor and simple can know.” They are like children who come to their parents hungry and, at the same time, yearning to be embraced and caressed.
If we pause to examine why we run to God, we might find that our prayers are similar to theirs: every petition we offer God for physical help never extinguishes our always-present yearning to encounter and behold Him.
In other words, the Black Nazarene devotion is a way devotees reach out to touch God, often through the difficult physical circumstances they find themselves in. They are like the hemorrhaging woman whose illness propels her to touch the hem of Jesus’ cloak, convinced that this tiny gesture was powerful enough for her to receive healing.
From skeptic to supporter
This perhaps unscientific experience of healing or help isn’t unique to devotees from less-schooled backgrounds. The Filipino Jesuit Fr. Jaime Bulatao, a renowned clinical psychologist, had a similar experience, except that in his case, he didn’t approach the Nazarene with the conscious request for physical healing.
Still, his unexpected cure convinced him that this popular devotion was a legitimate and a valuable way of touching the Lord. His story is summarized in the following:
One day he had a headache and went to Quiapo Church. He saw the people queuing before the statue of Christ Nazareno and doing their punas-punas (ritual of wiping the statue with handkerchiefs). To facilitate the wiping, there are several women or manangs there in maroon clothes to help you. They get your handkerchief and they wipe it for you. So a manang got Fr. Bulatao's handkerchief and had it touch the Nazareno. After he got the handkerchief, he wiped his forehead with it. He became well. His headache disappeared! And he asked the question: 'Who is the better Christian: the one who uses handkerchiefs in order to contact Christ or the one who uses concepts in order to contact Christ?'
Attractive or disruptive?
We might wonder what draws believers to images of Jesus as weak and suffering, when it is never easy to see someone we love defeated or in pain.
But in the dark-skinned suffering Christ, devotees encounter a God who suffers in solidarity with them. And as they experience his suffering with them, devotees make sense of their suffering, interweaving their experience of pain with the story of Christ’s suffering, death, and ultimately, his triumphant resurrection.
