Miracles, Saints and Pilgrimages

Do you have a health problem? Particularly, ugly warts on a visible part of your body? Visit San Benito on his feast day, June eleventh. All you have to do is dip a hanky in blessed oil, rub it on your warts and presto! warts be gone. Though if you have any other health problem, he'll also help you get over it. You just have to rub the blessed oil over the afflicted part of the body. Now, while there are many parishes that celebrate San Benito (Saint Benedict), the most miraculous one is in the monastery of Lerez, right next to the city of Pontevedra. After all, the traditional song goes:

Si vas a san Benitiño,
Non vaias ó de Paredes.
Que máis milagreiro é
O do conventiño de Lerez.

(If you go to little San Benito,
Don't go to the one at Paredes.
Because more miraculous is
The one at the little monastery of Lerez.)

There are many ancient beliefs like this one that were once attached to a local deity. With the advent of Christianity, the miracles were taken over by a particular saint, and the people continued their pilgrimiges to those holy sites. And there are many people, especially older people, who still believe completely in the curative powers of these saints. My mother-in-law decided to pull up all her potatoes yesterday, to my husband's chagrin, who had to go help her after a full day's work. Why? So she could go this Saturday to the Mass of San Benito's feast day to ask him to intercede for her health. She believes in his power more than in the doctors' powers.

Another saint geared toward helping a doctor's work is San Roque (Saint Roche). He is the patron saint of victims of the plague and dogs. No, I don't know why the juxtaposition. He's always portrayed showing a bubo on his leg with his faithful dog beside him. Once upon a time, though, most illnesses were called "plagues", not just the bubonic kind. The portrayals we see now in churches are more modern, from the nineteenth century onwards. He is still honored for having gotten rid of the plague at a moment in the long ago past by being invoked and causing a miracle.

Two of the strangest romerías are Santa Marta de Ribarteme in As Neves and O Nazareno in Pobra do Caramiñal. The first is at the end of July and the second in the middle of September. At both of those festivals, people who have had a

battle with death and won go to give thanks. In a very particular way. In the procession that follows the saint, they either carry their own coffin, or are carried in it. Both festivals date back over five hundred years and their origins are supposedly in miracles where a fervent believer, dying, prayed to those saints and had a miraculous recuperation. Thousands of people attend both festivals, some coming from other countries, even. 

From there we go one notch up. Galicia being the country of meigas (witches) and meigallos (spells and evil eyes) par excellence, we couldn't be without at least one romería dedicated to that theme. In Santa Baia de Losón, Lalín, there is a sanctuary dedicated to Nosa Señora do Corpiño where, on the twenty-third and twenty-fourth of June whoever considers himself possessed by an evil spirit can go to have it driven from his body. Its priest is one of the extremely few with permission to do exorcisms. Though, at the festival, walking underneath the statue of the Virgin Mary is supposed to help you ward off the devil and his minions. Sometimes, through hysteria most likely, someone will scream and

twist on the ground as they attempt to pass. A cousin of mine went once and he told us his jaw dropped open when he saw some of the people who were foaming at the mouth and blaspheming and how they had to be held down by various other faithful. Not a visit for the faint of heart.

Most of these romerías used to take place in a woods, generally an oak woods. With the encroachment of the cities, some of these festivals have become urban, like in Pobra do Caramiñal. However, where the site is still surrounded by nature, it's common to take a picnic lunch and make a day of it. People will attend the Mass and the procession in the morning, eat, take a siesta, and then eat some supper and stay for the music in the evening. That is what tends to happen at San Ramón de Bealo in Boiro. He is supposed to help pregnant women have sons. So you'll see more than the normal amount of pregnant women at Mass there on August thirtieth. The surrounding wooded area, which has lost most of its oak and acquired eucaliptus and pines, is usually staked out for weeks beforehand by friends that come together on that day to have a good time together. Now for most young people it's become a pilgrimage to good fun, but not so long ago people still believed. The old still do, but the religious fervor is beginning to die off with them.

At every one of those feasts, the faithful who are asking for intercession or giving thanks, usually buy and light long candles and then leave them behind in the church or chapel. Sometimes the candle is in the shape of the body part that is afflicted. So, if you look at all the candles left behind, you can also see them shaped as legs, arms, hands, heads, and feet. Some of the regular tapers are even taller than the devotee and have wooden sticks tied to them so they don't break.

There are also devotees who pin money to the saint's clothing as an offering. I remember as a child seeing a saint at a parish nearby where they have a romería of our Virgin of the Miracles (Nosa Señora dos Milagros). Its gown was completely covered in bills, pesetas at the time. You couldn't tell what color the gown was. Now you'll still see a few, but not that many. Times are tough, even for the saints.