San Cataldo Holy Week

Suggestive moments of popular piety during Holy Week in San Cataldo (Sicily) between popular culture, devotion, tradition and folklore. Hundreds of people are involved each year in the demonstrations of Holy Week, which reiterates the themes dear to the popular and religious tradition of the Passion, Death and Resurrection of Christ. HOLY WEDNESDAY: HISTORICAL COURT - Wednesday offers moments of great spectacle. Hundreds of extras in splendid costumes, give life to a long and majestic historical procession, among the trumpet blasts, the trot of the numerous and elegant horses involved and the attention of the thousands of spectators arranged along the square. The sentence imposed by Pilate decrees the fate of the Nazarene. The recomposed procession, with Jesus forced to drag the cross, proceeds to Calvary, where we witness the hanging of Judas. HOLY THURSDAY: The real protagonists of this day are Mary, "the Addulurata" and the favorite disciple of Jesus, "San Giuvannuzzu". Late in the evening from Thursday, the statues of Our Lady of Sorrows and St. John leave the Church of St. Joseph, carried by devotees on their shoulders. After a long journey that stops in the churches of the town, in which the Sorrowful Child searches for the Son, the procession ends late in the evening before the door of the Mother Church, where the dead Christ is found: the door of the Church is suddenly closed the band begins to intone the Pianto di Maria, a funeral march of great emotional content. GOOD FRIDAY: It's the most eventful day. At dawn citizenship is invited to take part in a moving procession in which Our Lady of Sorrows meets the Dead Christ. Faithful, confraternities, guilds, marching bands accompany Christ to Calvary to exhibit him in the niche, which will be a pilgrimage destination for the faithful throughout the day. Later in the morning the "Procession of the Mysteries" takes place. It is the moment in which the various depictions of the Passion scenes, made at the end of the 19th century by the Malecore brothers, papier-mache masters of Lecce, are shown. In the middle of the square there is the meeting of the Addolorata and San Giovanni with the Christ carrying the Cross and from there he is accompanied to Calvary. The events arrive at the peak immediately after sunset, with another live representation: A 'Scinnenza, which recalls the Crucifixion and the Death of Christ. After the deposition of the Dead Christ, a long procession accompanies the funerary shrine towards the Mother Church. The events arrive at the peak immediately after sunset, with another live representation: a 'Scinnenza, historically important since the first time dates back over 150 years ago, which recalls the Crucifixion and the Death of Christ. After the deposition of the Dead Christ, a long procession accompanies the funerary urn towards the Mother Church. EASTER SUNDAY: Holy Week rites end on Easter Sunday, with the Sampauluna parade, giant papier-mâché statues impersonating the Apostles, originating in Spain and dating back to 1800, which ends with the meeting of the risen Christ and the pious women.