The following speech was delivered by His Excellency, the Philippine Ambassador to the United Kingdom, Teodoro L. Locsin Jr. at the 10th Anniversary of the Filipino Community’s Celebration of the Feast of the Black Nazarene on 5 January 2025, at St. Agnes Catholic Church, Cricklewood, London. Locsin, who had served as Philippine Foreign Affairs Secretary and was 20th Permanent Representative of the Philippines to the United Nations in 2017, has been Philippine Ambassador to the United Kingdom since 30 August 2022.
“Fr. Tom Banayag, Fr. Irvin Morastil, Fr. Richard Magararu, devotees of the Black Nazarene who came here today in the freezing cold, ladies and gentlemen.
It is a privilege, more a devotion to join you today in celebration of one of the most cherished traditions of Filipinos, the Feast of the Black Nazarene. For a decade now, our community here in the UK has gathered yearly to worship the Black Nazarene; keeping a unique flame of Catholic faith burning brightly on distant shores.
So, we gather today to mark the fierce devotion, the uncompromising insistence to take Christ to oneself directly; and the deep spirituality the Black Nazarene continues to inspire in tens of millions of Filipino Catholics. Because it is as much a populist rite as an ecclesiastical event. The entire ritual shows why.
As a reporter for my own newspaper, I covered it in Quiapo where it must take place. This is how it begins and unfolds.
People gather in front of Quiapo Church. At that time a giant billboard dominating the square showed the young me, and the even younger John Pratts sporting Ben Chan jacket and jeans. It was so large surely the crowd couldn’t miss it. In a way, John and I seem to have stumbled on the rite. I just had to say that first.
The crowd swells until it is pressing flush against the doors of the Church that are closed. It is as if the Church was under siege from the faithful who are determined this day to take Christ back without the intermediation of the Church.
The doors stay shut. The people start to wail. Their wailing rises in volume; some are crying aloud. The crowd pull out white handkerchiefs and wave them overhead. It looks and it sounds like a swarm of crying sea gulls skimming a sea of devotion. Still the Church doors stay shut.
The people do not stop wailing and waving their handkerchiefs. Finally, in seeming exasperation, priests fling open the giant Church doors to the square. With an exaggerated show of effort, a cannon is dragged to the open doors. The cannon trails two long thick ropes whose thickly knotted ends have been shoved down its throat.
The gun fires. The ropes fly out of the smoke of the explosion towards the crowd which surges forward to catch them, if possible both ropes by the same section of crowd. But the ropes are too far apart. The crowd splits in two; each grabs one rope and pulls — in different directions.
It is a contest of raw strength matched by intense devotion. One side starts to give way. The other side seizes the moment to pull harder; the carriage carrying the Black Nazarene lurches in their direction.
I am standing on a ledge with the privileged, invited by the owner of the building to enjoy a commanding view of the event. Down on the square many are barefoot; yet heedless of the broken glass and sharp stones that may cut the soles of their feet. I see my mentor Noli de Castro among the devotees; he is barefoot; he has long been a devotee of the Black Nazarene.
The carriage moves in one direction — to the wailing of the opposing side and the cheers of the side getting its way with the Black Nazarene. Then the carriage turns a corner and disappears. Rumour quickly spreads that it has been hijacked; probably taken to the house of a sick person for a miraculous cure. Then it is pulled again to perhaps another afflicted house — or taken by the other side.
On it goes, the Black Nazarene swaying from side to side as it continues being pulled in two directions — and yet it makes forward progress. It is as if it has a will of its own, carved out of the shared devotion of opposed devotees like a resolution of contradictions by antithetical motions. Karl Marx would recognize it as his idea raised to an impossibly higher plane. Upon on the ledge, we onlookers say our breath it is a miracle. The Black Nazarene’s eyes look skyward from the agonizing pain of the crown of thorns shoved down His forehead or exasperation at the wayward progress of His carriage.
Day is fading; night is falling. The Black Nazarene must be returned to the Church by those who want to keep Him longer. Yet to the Church the carriage makes its way like it has a mind of its own. He belongs to the Church like a king in his court; and yet the Black Nazarene on His carriage will be left in a corner of the church until the next procession. He has only been lent to the faithful for the day. The Church doors reopen to receive it.
On the stern direction of the priest, the carriage is pulled into the Church compound. The devotees leave. The giant doors slam shut behind them. The crowd outside wails; Christ has been taken from them again through sheer institutional force. They are powerless to oppose it. Although outnumbered by the mob of devotees, the priests are inviolate and command obedience. That is Catholicism. Obedience. In this matter, there is no glory in rebellion.
The crowd on the square thins out slowly as though clinging to the fading exhilaration of the day and to the hope the Black Nazarene will be theirs again. Then the lights go out in the Church. The people wake up to the realization Christ is gone; feeling perhaps like the Apostles when Christ was taken down from the cross and lay in His Mother’s arms.
The square is soon empty. The Filipino people have had their time with Christ who must spend the balance of the year in Church custody. It was a brief but generous concession to the people: to give them back their Savior for a while. And yet by giving and taking back, the Church has whetted the appetite of the faithful to have Him back again. Indeed, the Traslacion will happen again — and again — and again — to the ending of the world when He returns in glory.
We, the privileged standing on the ledge, feel like losers for denying ourselves the physical company of Christ the King. We turn to each other and embrace, forlorn. Our hearts are torn with regret; why didn’t we have the courage? Perhaps next year we will be in the square instead of looking down on it.
This annual celebration traces its roots to the 1600s. It is a vivid and vigorous demonstration of Filipino devotion, of the exhilaration of Filipino prayer by action rather than utterance; and of the unity that binds us all as one people — here in this church as on that square halfway around the world.
Filipino devotion is not meek, it is fierce; not grudging but total; holding nothing back. At least for the day. And yet no one is hurt despite the struggle to take Him exclusively; rarely does anyone get hurt; though it happens.
Nor is it exclusively Catholic; the Traslacion takes in all who are drawn to religious fervour, be they Catholic or Protestant. It is near Chinatown, so perhaps also Buddhist; and right next door to the Muslim quarter; animists too for all we know. The only requirement for admission is being there.
All are welcome to this collective tribute to the Black Nazarene, a king crowned not with gold and precious stones but thorns; dragged in His carriage up Calvary for His, when you think of it, self-sacrifice. The statue is black; it is said because of a fire on board a Spanish ship — one of many tales surrounding the rite. That is as good an explanation as any. Its real provenance has ceased to matter. All that counts is the present devotion of those taking part. I have seen foreigners in the crowd or at the windows of other buildings overlooking the event — witnesses to the power of Filipino faith.
As we honour the Black Nazarene, we recognize the ties that bind us Filipinos; even with others everywhere who have a similar intensity of devotion. Not unlike Tatbir which commemorates the martyrdom of Ali (who never claimed divinity) and the remorse of the faithful for failing to save him — as we still fail Christ.
Here in the United Kingdom, we see — better yet we experience the energy of the same devotion in Quiapo Church and its surrounding streets.
After night has fallen, we carry that feeling back to our homes; resolved to keep it alive in our hearts, as in the hearts of our children and, we hope, their children: a small unfailing flame to the end of time.
No longer black the easier for us to see Him, the Nazarene becomes the spectrum of all colours: a radiant light. We are blinded yet we see; we should doubt — but we believe.
Viva Cristo Rey! Señor de dolor y salvacion. El hacer tu voluntad, Dios mio, me ha agregado. Y tu ley, esta en medio de mi corazon. Gracias.”