PERU: Our Lord of Miracles

Traffic in old Lima, never free-flowing, backed up for blocks. Lima’s police fought to keep the crowds in hand. Then out through the studded doors of the Church of the Nazarenas and down the narrow street surged a procession of purple-clad penitents, with a great silver litter supported by straining men in the van. The 200th observance of Peru’s most popular religious festival, the fiesta of Our Lord of Miracles, had begun.

Every Latin land has its patrons and its saints. Peru, already blessed with Santa Rosa, has had Our Lord of Miracles since October 1746, when an earthquake destroyed Lima. Only one wall, the wall of a little church in the city’s poorest quarter, was left standing, and on it was a painting of the Christ, made by a nameless mulatto. Word of the miraculous preservation swept the ruins, and masses of people crowding around the wall started the first procession. As the procession advanced—so legend says—the earth stopped quaking.

March of the Penitents. The Church of the Nazarenas was built around the wall, and the painting, set in a gorgeous silver mounting, was elevated like Mexico’s Virgin of Guadalupe for all to see. Each year the image of Our Lord of Miracles was borne in procession on visits to other Lima churches. The poorer classes made the festivity their own, and a brotherhood grew up, now numbering some 3,000, to organize the procession and above all, to carry the heavy litter with Our Lord of Miracles.

Last week the procession wound down the same streets, visited the same churches. The first day Our Lord of Miracles “lunched” at the Church of the Concepción, “slept” at the ancient Church of Los Descalzos. From balconies along the narrow streets women tossed flowers. Occasionally white doves flew up, released from paper cages by the devout, as the procession passed their doors. Behind the sweating litterbearers walked the penitents, with feet bare and sometimes bleeding, holding candles aloft and murmuring contritional prayers.

Food for the Devout. It was the people’s parade. At one point the mayor, by tradition, set his shoulder to the timber, helped carry the image. Just behind the penitents ranged vendederos, hawking soft drinks and Lima’s best cakes.

The celebration would end in the Procesión de los Blancos, when the upper classes would be allowed a brief inning. Till then, business would be slow in Lima. Socialists and Communists, despite their dim. view of all religion, would not molest the procession. But if they tried, the broad-backed brotherhood of litter-carriers would strip off their purple coats and attend to them.