Basilica of Peñafrancia, Naga: a devotion that crossed an ocean, and a festival that once ended in tragedy on a collapsing bridge

In Naga City, in the province of Camarines Sur, in the Philippines, the minor basilica of Our Lady of Peñafrancia holds the most venerated Marian image of the Bicol region. The devotion begins with an image found on the Peña de Francia mountain, in the Spanish province of Salamanca, by a hermit named Simón Vela in 1434. Sources differ on his nationality: French according to the archdiocese, a Franciscan layman according to others. The devotion reached Naga between 1710 and 1712 through Miguel Robles de Covarrubias, a native of San Martín del Castañar, near Salamanca. Sources do not agree on whether he was already a priest at the time, or was ordained only later at Nueva Cáceres, today’s Naga. Robles first had a small chapel built, and commissioned a local craftsman to carve a wooden statue in baliti wood. A masonry church was then raised in 1741 under Bishop Ysidro de Arevalo. The present basilica was conceived by Archbishop Pedro Paulo Santos y Songco in 1960, on land donated by the married couple Macario and Irene Mariano. The foundation stone was laid on 18 April 1976, Easter Sunday, under Bishop Concordio Sarte, but the works halted for lack of funds. They resumed under Father Sofio Balce with the “Operation Peñafrancia Basilica” campaign and ended in September 1981. The building was solemnly dedicated on 22 May 1982 by Cardinal Sin, in the presence of Cardinal Julio Rosales. The name of the architect is not documented in any source consulted. Pope John Paul II raised it to a minor basilica on 22 May 1985, although one source gives 2 May as the date of the Vatican decree, at the request of Archbishop Leonardo Z. Legaspi. The devotion is celebrated every year with the Traslación, the transfer of the image to the metropolitan cathedral of Naga, and with the famous fluvial procession along the Naga river, or Bicol, formally instituted by Bishop Francisco Gainza from 1 September 1864. It now draws over a million devotees, with recent estimates of up to 1.8 million participants according to the Naga tourist office. On 16 September 1972, during the procession, the Colgante bridge, overloaded with spectators watching the votive pagoda go by, collapsed. It caused one hundred and thirty-eight confirmed deaths, mostly by drowning or by electrocution from power cables that fell into the water. Contrary to a widespread rumour, this was not the sinking of the religious boat, but the structural failure of the bridge itself.