Alarmed by the growing commercialization of the celebration of the Peñafrancia Fiesta Most Rev, Leonardo Z. Legazpi O.P.D.D., issued a pastoral letter reminding the faithful of the need to give priority and utmost concern to honoring our Lady of Peñafrancia on the occasion. rather than devote the occasion to giving reverence to Ina, many are bedeviled with the insatiable yearning for fast money with the influx of devotees and pilgrims. the diminishing religiosity may also be the justification for the on-going three-year preparation of the Archdiocese for the celebration of the 300th year of devotion by Bicolanos and many non-Bicolanos to Ina calendared for 2010.
The good Archbishop has sufficient and valid reasons to worry. In the first place there is an increasing number of people in our midst who have imbibed new tenets diametrically opposed to what Catholics believe very firmly: that Virgin Mary is Mother of Jesus, Mother of God. In fact, this is the dominant disparity between the Catholic religion and most other Christian denominations and it is on this belief that Catholics are irreconciliable with divergent Christian aggrupations.
The discernible lapses in the celebration of the Peñafrancia fiesta are, however, largely not the fault of the common Catholic believers who have even become overly demonstrative if not fanatical in their observance of major fiesta activities as the Traslacion and the Fluvial procession.
The Naga City government which controls and operates fiesta-related non-religious activities is directly responsible for the unabashed commercialization of the Peñafrancia fiesta. It is raking in millions of pesos in commercial ads that have literally wrapped the entire Naga City by acceding to capricious demands of businesses to install all sorts of visual promotional gimmicks no matter if they completely blur out the Image of our Lady of Peñafrancia. Even parades and the beauty contest have taken center stage, shoving to the background the religious nature of the celebration.
Worse than commercialization, however, is the obvious effort of some politicians to capitalize on the celebration for media mileage as getting TV cameras focused on them during the start of the processions even if they just actually disappear after footages have been taken or appearing during mass in walking shorts despite admonitions by ecclesiastical authorities that those attending mass should be in proper attire.
Yes, Archbishop, let us have less commercialization and much lesser political gimmicks during Peñafrancia fiesta celebrations.
