Holy Week is moving towards its climax and towards those who are the most awaited and heartfelt events in the city. If the Solemn Procession of Good Friday, despite its beauty and magnificence, is found in the traditional and folkloric heritage of numerous cities in central-southern Italythat of Holy Thursday stands out for its particularity and perhaps uniqueness, distinguishing Lanciano from other centres.
The fulcrum of this rite is the church of Santa Chiara, headquarters of the “Death and Prayer” Archconfraternity always guardian of the sacred events that accompany Lanciano towards Easter. At twilight time, around 6 pm, the so-called “Sepulchre” is finally revealed“, scenic representation of Christ taken down from the cross, a display that is different every year and always rich in symbols, meanings and messages, often linked not only to the Christian faith, but also to what is the historical moment in which it is realized.
A few hours later, at 10pm, the wooden doors of the religious building open along Corso Roma to make room for the Procession of the Hooded. The only male brothers arranged in two rows wind through the streets of the historic center, wearing the typical black brotherhood dress and with their faces hidden by a hood. The only aid to their austere and mysterious gait it is the flame of a candle whose light, thanks to the darkness that envelops the streets of the ancient centre, and together with the notes of the sacred songs performed by the band, it makes the atmosphere even more fascinating.
The covered face is a fundamental premise of the procession itself: it recalls at the same time the shame of the man “guilty” of having betrayed the Son of Godbut also refers to the origins of the brotherhood, born at the end of the 16th century, when the noblemen, without showing their identity, took care, with great Christian piety, to give a worthy burial to the poor and the disinherited who in those years, also due to the plague, were dying in the streets.
Central figure of the procession he is the so-called Cyrenean, a deserving brother, chosen by the Prior and whose true identity is known only to him, who barefoot and with his face covered takes on the heavy wooden cross. The Cyrenean, as the word itself says, recalls the evangelical figure of Simon of Cyrene, the man who accompanied Jesus to Golgotha, sharing his fatigue and suffering.
The journalist Piergiorgio Greco he summed up perfectly and in just a few words what this tradition represents for the Frenta community. “One man, one city. A cross, thousands of prayers, hopes, desires, joys, pains. That man summarizes a city, that cross that he carries on his shoulders – heavy, cold, angular, yet full of meaning and hope – summarizes in itself all the profound expectations of a Lanciano which, perhaps he is just waiting to see that man with that cross come out of the church of Santa Chiara”.
. Simone Cortese
