Language: – Portuguese, Russian
Year of production: 2016
Duration: 37 min
The pilgrimage to Our Lady of Nazareth in Belem, Brazil, is the biggest Catholic pilgrimage in the world. More to it, it is the biggest pilgrimage as an event of the modern world and brings together about 2 mln people. It shows that the Faith is alive, that it transforms people, changes their lives and transfigure life in general.
A pilgrimage is a challenge to the secular world of our days. Yet the term “pilgrimage” is almost the same age as Christianity. And yet the secular world brings pilgrimage down to the level of anachronism or a very narrow, very church event, without wide public character not mentioning national level. Almost nobody knows anything about such global movements of people who follow a spiritual way.
The visuals are impressive: pilgrims arrive even by river. Thousands of boats along the Amazon follow the ship with the Holy Statue. For 5 hours on Sunday a procession will move slowly along the city towards Basilica, around the flowers-decorated palanquin with the statue. The majorities of pilgrims walk bare foot and are dressed in special garments resembling death-clothes and carry crosses and candles.
All this underlines dramatically the beauty of a Christian pilgrimage and expressiveness of Faith.