No other place can you find a high-profile Catholic Church, a Moslem Mosque, and several stalls selling herbal remedies, amulets, as well as booths that offer palm-reading, tarot cards and perhaps, all the known ways of fortune-telling – all in one thickly-populated area.
The Quiapo Church or the Minor Basilica of the Black Nazarene, draws thousands of devotees because of the image of the Nuestro Padre Jesus Nazareno or the Black Nazarene. The image was brought to the Philippines by the first wave of Augustinian Recollect missionaries in 1606. It was enshrined the same year in the first church of the Augustinians in Bagumbayan under the patron of St. John the Baptist. In 1608, it was transferred to a larger Recollect church in Intramuros, and sometime between 1767 and 1790, Manila Archbishop Basilio de Santas Justa y Rufina ordered that the image of the Black Nazarene be moved to Quiapo where it has been housed since then.
The Archbishop of Manila, Gaudencio Cardinal Rosales declared May 31, 2006 until June 1, 2007 as the Jubilee Year in honor of the Fourth Centenary of the Nuestro Padre Jesus Nazareno de Quiapo. It has been an established tradition to celebrate the feast of the Black Nazarene on the 9th of January. However, according to the article published in Manila Standard in May of this year, the Jubilee organizers stress that January 9 is “neither the feast day of the parish nor of the Black Nazarene, but the transfer of the image from the Walled City to Quiapo Church. The proper date is June 24, the fiesta dedicated to St. John the Baptist.”
The image of the Black Nazarene, which has survived an array of disasters – the fires that destroyed Quiapo Church in 1791 and 1929; the earthquakes of 1645 and 1863; the carpet bombing during World War II – has been attributed with numerous divine interventions and countless granted pleas. It continues to draw devotees from all over the country, especially on Fridays, which is the designated day for the devotees of the Black Nazarene.
