MANILA (UCAN) -- Cherime Figuero-Co was a troubled 19-year-old student when she prayed before the Black Nazarene statue in Manila six years ago about her suspected pregnancy.

At St. John the Baptist Church in the city's Quiapo district, the single teenager prayed, "Please don't let me be pregnant because I have so many things to do and I have many dreams." She recalled to UCA News on Dec. 31 that she promised before the statue of the dark-skinned Christ then that "if I'm pregnant, I'll not abort the baby." She also vowed to "live a righteous life" whether or not she was pregnant.

Her pregnancy was eventually confirmed and her boyfriend married her. On hindsight, she says God was "testing" her faith. She believes he has given her a "comfortable" life and keeps her 6-year-old son healthy because she fulfilled the promises she made to him in front of the image of the Black Nazarene.

Co spoke with UCA News while anticipating with fellow devotees the Jan. 9 feast of the Black Nazarene.

According to Manila archdiocese's social communications office, Cardinal Gaudencio Rosales of Manila is scheduled to celebrate Mass at St. John the Baptist Church at 6 a.m. on the feast day. Auxiliary Bishop Broderick Pabillo will lead the 12:15 p.m. Mass just before the annual procession of the life-size image around Quiapo.

Manila Mayor Alfredo Lim, speaking with reporters on Jan. 5, noted that fiesta crowds gathering for the event had already reached 3 million. By then, Manila police had cleared the procession route of stalls set up by vendors, fortunetellers and others.

Co told UCA News she is grateful that her ethnic Chinese husband, who is a Buddhist, "respects" her faith and devotion to the Black Nazarene. She said he "allows" her to attend Mass every feast day and "often" asks about it.

The 25-year-old mother says she wishes to teach her son to pray to the Black Nazarene just as Co's mother "inspired" her devotion.

Co remembers she was in fourth-year high school then, the first time she accompanied her mother to the fiesta Mass and procession. She said she did not understand why they had to squeeze through the crowd. "My mother told me our family receives frequent blessings even though we are poor because of my relatives' faith in the Nazarene," Co recalled.

As she matured, she said, she "understood" what her mother meant. "Every time I see the Nazarene today, I feel assured and very joyful, and when I'm in the procession, I find myself waving my small towel" with Christ's face on it. "Some years, I couldn't sleep around the time of the feast of the Nazarene."

The fiesta procession is one of three times a year that a replica of the Black Nazarene is taken out of the Quiapo Church. A smaller crowd of devotees takes it for their New Year's thanksgiving procession around Quiapo and a more solemn procession on Good Friday. A replica is used in the procession to avoid damage to the original statue, according to a Church official.

According to Manila archdiocese's website (www.rcam.org), Spanish Augustinian Recollect priests brought the original wooden icon of Christ, carved in Mexico by an Aztec carpenter, to Manila in 1606.

The priests first housed the statue in their church in part of what is now Rizal Park. They later transferred the image to their second church, inside Intramuros, the former walled part of Manila.

Pope Innocent X in 1650 established the Confraternity of Jesus of Nazareth to encourage devotion to the Black Nazarene, an image of a kneeling Christ in a dark maroon robe, a weighty cross on his shoulders and his face a pained expression of suffering. In the 19th century, Pope Pius VII granted indulgences to those who piously pray before the image.

The image was transferred from Intramuros to St. John the Baptist Church in the commercial district of Quiapo in 1767. Annual processions commemorate this transfer. In 1988, the late Cardinal Jaime Sin, then archbishop of Manila, initiated the building of the Minor Basilica of the Black Nazarene in the Quiapo church.

Among those expected to attend this year's procession is Vice President Manuel "Noli" de Castro, a long-time Black Nazarene devotee.

END