LOST IN SICILIA - Passional Procession

One afternoon I spent observing Holy Friday celebration with dozen of hooded man on small italian Island.

A few years ago I found myself living and studying on one of the most beautiful italian islands.

During that time I attended the Holy Friday celebration in small town in the heart of the island - Enna. I was there along with a group o f exchange students - Germans, Poles, Hungarian, Egyptian, Iranian, Chilean and a few others. Understanding what was going on was hard enough for me – raised in catholic country, a girl who had seen it all – Good Friday, Corpus Christi Processions etc. The rest was even more confused because this celebration was quite unique for many reasons.

I took a few pictures during the procession which started on the early afternoon and lasted for many hours until the late night. We haven’t stayed that long, but what we have seen for first few hours was enough to be left with a lot of emotions and sense of somehow profound but also very odd experience.

Seeing all those hooded men wearing outfits in different colours made us think about klu klux klan immediately. But we couldn’t be more wrong. I must explain it has nothing to do with this organization.

Those are traditional outfits dating hundreds of years into island’s history As we learned, each color mean the belonging to the different “confraternity”. They are like brotherhoods - special associations which continue traditions from the period of Spanish rule when medieval guilds existed. Those Easter traditions have been cultivated for centuries and brotherhoods still are responsible for organizing religious celebrations and social activities.

The procession took more than 20 hours and ended late at night. The walk
around the city was long and slow, mainly because of the huge figure of St.Agatha that was carried along with the pilgrims.

The most meaningful photo with a very symbolic undertone is the one that shows a little boy of colour wearing the same outfit. It says a lot about the modern world and how it has changed for last few decades.

Nevertheless I am happy to be able to share moments I had a chance to capture.