Santo Niño goes global

MANILA'S Fiesta Del Santo Niño, organized yearly by the Congregacion del Santisimo Niño Jesus, is 25 years old and its fervor shows no sign of abating. It has done for the Santo Niño what the annual Immaculate Conception procession has done for Mariology: sustain folk devotion in the premier See of the Philippines where, depending on your point of view, Catholicism is either on a retreat due to the secular tide or on a recidivist reunion with its pagan roots.

But the Santo Niño phenomenon has been there all along. Its fervor has never really receded. The Fiesta merely complements the Santo Niño fiestas all over the metropolis, notably Tondo's over the weekend, which are basically wild and dramatic expressions of faith.

Such faith expressions are not limited to the Filipinos alone. As the annual weeklong exhibit of 500 icons at the Philippine National Bank Bldg. on the President Diosdado Macapagal Highway shows, the devotion to the Santo Niño is worldwide. In a remarkable innovation, the exhibit includes a pilgrimage through the third-floor open-air patio garden in which symbolic shrines have been set up to represent key Santo Niño shrines in Europe and South America.

The shrines contain European and American icons or their replicas carved by Filipino craftsmen. The famous Holy Infant of Prague is here (guess if it's a reproduction or from Czechoslovakia itself), as well as those from Zacatecas, Mexico and Beaune, France are here.

All are the products of religious tours by the Congregacion in the Old and the New Worlds in which the members scoured the ends of the continents in order to locate just about every popular devotion to the Holy Infant.

What the Congregacion found out, according to fashion designer Nolie Hans, was that the Santo Niño is a resilient devotion that cuts across the generations and the races. It's a devotion for all seasons and all geographies.

In Beaune, France, for example, the Congregacion found the Holy Infant and its six icons in the care of old Carmelite nuns who were only too happy to welcome the Filipino visitors expressing such an interest on the devotion. Although Catholicism was evidently on the decline in France, as shown by the dearth of religious vocations, the devotion to the Holy Infant was intense and consistent.

Overwhelming

In Zacatecas, called the jewel of the Sierra in Mexico, Hans said the Congregacion took a protracted trip up the mountain as twilight was giving in to the darkness, the mountain fastness looming grimmer and grimmer. Hans recalled designer Ben Farrales, the Congregacion's founding chairman, getting anxious and frightened that they were being taken for a ride by the local guide.

But then at the top of the mountain, the shrine of the Santo Niño de Atocha emerged. When the Congregacion trained their eyes at the distance, they saw the multitudes making their way to the shrine-on their knees. The sight was overwhelming.