Photo of the Day: Cirio de Nazare procession

Cheridan Sanders

June 23, 2013
PILGRIMS RAISE HANDS DURING ANNUAL PROCESSION IN BRAZIL
With World Youth Day around the corner, I thought I'd share (over the course of the next few weeks) some of my favourite images from Brazil. Hopefully, this will give you a sense of how Brazilians practice their faith (and that you'll find these images as intriguing as I did). Today's image depicts pilgrims following the image of Our Lady of Nazareth as it is paraded during the annual Cirio de Nazare procession, the country's biggest religious festival, in the city of Belem, at the mouth of the Amazon River. More than one million Catholics, many of them from communities along the Amazon River's tributaries, converged on Our Lady of Nazareth basilica to participate in the event.
To find out more about this year's World Youth Day in Rio de Janiero, Brazil, visit wydcentral.org
All images courtesy of Catholic News Service
CNS photo/Paulo Santos, Reuters