Flores de Mayo 2023

Basilica of Santa Maria degli Angeli e dei Martiri. Rome, 28 May 2023

Flores de Mayo (Spanish for “Flowers of May”) is one of the most beautiful festivals that can be attended in Rome by the Filipino community, which is celebrated simultaneously in the Philippines in the month of May, dedicated to the cult of the Blessed Virgin Mary.

I've almost forgotten when I first photographed it, but I think it was about twenty years ago.

It is a festival that lasts for the entire month of May inherited from the Spanish presence in the Philippines that combines the religious aspect with the folkloristic one, whose origin dates back to after the proclamation of the dogma of the Immaculate Conception in 1854 and after its publication around 1867 of Mariano Sevilla's translation of the devotional “Flores de María” (“Flowers of Mary”).

On the last day of the festival, there is the ritual procession called Santacruzan (from the Spanish santa cruz, “holy cross”).

Santacruzan is a religious-historical beauty pageant held in many cities, towns, and even small communities in the Philippines. One of the folk aspects of this festival, the procession, depicts the finding of the True Cross in Jerusalem by Queen Helena, mother of Constantine the Great, and over time has become part of the Filipino traditions identified with youth, love, and romance.

Over the years the parade has followed different routes, depending on the church where the Holy Mass was celebrated.

This year the celebration took place in the ancient Basilica of Santa Maria degli Angeli e dei Martiri: a small Baroque jewel from the 1500s by the architect Vanvitelli – based on a project by Michelangelo Buonarroti – in Piazza della Repubblica, a stone's throw from Termini Station.

The Filipino Cardinal Luis Antonio Tagle arrived to officiate the Mass, consecrated Cardinal by Pope Benedict XVI in 2012, under the gaze of the ubiquitous statue of San Lorenzo Ruiz, also called San Lorenzo of Manila, the Filipino saint who lived in the 1600s venerated in the Catholic Church. A Chinese Filipino, who became the country's protomartyr after his execution in Japan by the Tokugawa shogunate during the persecution of Japanese Christians in the 17th century.

Lorenzo Ruiz is the patron saint of, among others, the Philippines and the Filipino people.

After Mass, every religious community linked to a church in Rome lined up, led by the chosen couple in traditional dress, to begin the procession which ended, as every year, in the Philippine Basilica of Santa Pudenziana, in Via Urbana, considered for centuries to be the oldest Christian church in Rome, dating back to the 5th century, and today the Philippine national church.

Heat aside, Flores de Mayo remains one of the most exciting and engaging festivals to see and photograph.

Rich in cultural, historical, and prideful suggestions, a short distance from June 12th which celebrates the Independence Day of the Philippines, precisely by the Spaniards.

Another piece of secret Rome that gushes out of its cobblestones.

 

Italian version