Filipino Community Honors Virgin Of Penafrancia

Published: November 4, 2004

GAINESVILLE—Members of the Filipino Catholic community in the Archdiocese of Atlanta recently held a festival that mirrored an important event in their home country.

The Penafrancia festival in Naga City is considered the biggest Marian pageant in the Bicol region of the Philippines. In 1710, Miguel de Cubarrubias built a chapel near the Bicol region in thanksgiving for the many miracles he believed he had received from the Virgin Mary. Since then, a wide public devotion started.

The religious observance begins each year on the second Friday of September when a statue of the Virgin of Penafrancia is carried from a shrine to Naga City’s cathedral and a nine-day period of prayer is begun.

On the last day of the novena, which falls on the third Saturday of September, the statue is carried back to the shrine via a river route. The statue is placed aboard an elaborate pagoda, and rowed down the river by an all male crew, gaily decorated by banners. Back on land, the women of the community pray the rosary, as the fluvial procession takes place.

Shouts of “Viva la Virgin!” signal the culmination of the procession as the image of the Virgin is brought back to the shrine.

The Bicolanos community in the Atlanta area held its own festival to mark the feast day of the Virgin of Penafrancia on Saturday, Sept. 18. On the last day of a novena, the community gathered in Riverforks Park on Lake Lanier, where they participated in a Mass celebrated by Father Chito Palang, parochial vicar at St. Monica Church in Duluth.

After the Mass, the full rosary prayer was offered during the fluvial procession while the Virgin of Penafrancia was paraded on the elegantly decorated pagoda on Lake Lanier.

Though Georgia had been recently hit with hurricanes, the weather remained blessedly clear, said community member Jay Suarez.

“Amazingly, on Sept. 18, the sky was clear and sunny,” he said. “It was a beautiful day for the celebration of the Virgin of Penafrancia.”

The Filipino community of the Archdiocese of Atlanta gathers each month for Mass and fellowship. For more information, contact Lorna Buntichai at (770) 513-3126.