Santo Niño: The Filipino devotion sweeping the world
With Filipinos living in every corner of the globe, so is devotion to Señor Santo Niño de Cebu
Filipino migrants across the world will celebrate on Sunday the feast of the Holy Child Jesus, or Señor Santo Niño de Cebu.
The feast — also known as Fiesta Señor and falls Jan. 19 this year — is sometimes also called Sinulog, after a dance to venerate an image of the Child Jesus in the city of Cebu, the Philippines’ first capital.
In recent decades, the feast has spread across the world, along with the Filipino diaspora.
The Santo Niño image, which is more than 500 years old and of Flemish origin, is enshrined in a marble chapel in the Basilica Minore del Santo Niño. Augustinian friars administer the basilica, which St. Paul VI called the “mother and head or fountainhead of every other church in the Philippine Islands.”
Pope Paul authorized the image’s coronation, which took place on April 28, 1965, as part of the 400th anniversary of the evangelization of the Philippines. The pope’s move gave the country its lone papally crowned statue of Christ.
The high point of Fiesta Señor, a proper feast on the nation’s liturgical calendar, is the third Sunday of January, when civil authorities expect to welcome up to five million people to Cebu City.
But Filipino-initiated Santo Niño festivities are also underway in many places abroad.
At St. Benedict’s Church in Auckland, New Zealand, Santo Niño devotees will hold their feast on Jan. 19, the 31st celebration of the saint in the city.
In England, the 16th annual feast was moved to Jan. 11, with half a day of events including Mass at St. George’s Cathedral, Southwark. A 9th annual fiesta was also held the same day at St. Robert Catholic Church in San Bruno, California.
Catholics in Singapore will honor Santo Niño at the Church of the Holy Spirit and Church of Divine Mercy Jan. 26. Fiesta Masses are scheduled on Jan. 11 and Jan. 18 respectively at St. Joseph’s Cathedral in Abu Dhabi and St. Mary’s Catholic Church in Al Ain.
In Portugal, Lisbon’s Patriarch Rui Valério will preside over a Jan. 19 Mass for Santo Niño in the city’s historic Estrela Basilica.
Santo Niño de Cebu represents Jesus Christ as an infant, wearing a white vest that symbolizes his Resurrection and a crimson cape that recalls his Most Precious Blood. The image has a crown, a reference to Jesus’ universal kingship. It also has a scepter on its right and an orb topped by a cross on its left hand, symbolizing Jesus’ authority and sovereignty.
Pope Francis underscored the image’s significance in a homily on Fiesta Señor during his 2015 visit to the Philippines.
“The Santo Niño continues to proclaim to us that the light of God’s grace has shone upon a world dwelling in darkness. It brings the Good News of our freedom from slavery, and guides us in the paths of peace, right, and justice,” the pope said.
“The Santo Niño also reminds us of our call to spread the reign of Christ throughout the world.”
With a Catholic population of at least 85 million, the world’s third-largest after Brazil and Mexico’s, the Philippines has a diaspora of around 15 million people.
Nearly every family in the country has an image of the Santo Niño, and family members often carry a miniature version of the image when traveling. So it’s no surprise that Filipinos are introducing Santo Niño everywhere they go.
Br. Vincentius Teguh Samudra, OP, a 22-year-old Indonesian friar, and four of his brother Dominicans joined a Jan. 10 Mass in preparation for the 460th fiesta in Cebu. He told The Pillar that devotion to Santo Niño had enriched his faith.
“What makes it really memorable for me is the feeling of joy,” he said. “Among all the devotions that I have known in the Philippines so far — for example, Manaoag, La Naval, and Nazareno — Santo Niño devotion is the one that has the joyful spirit, while the others are more solemn.”
Manaoag and La Naval are popular devotions to Our Lady of the Most Holy Rosary, while Nuestro Padre Jesús Nazareno is centered on a dark-colored image of Christ carrying the Cross that attracts up to 10 million people when brought through the streets of Manila every Jan. 9.
Masses offered in Cebu by local and visiting clergy across nine days before Fiesta Señor weekend feature the singing of the hymn “Gozos ni Señor Santo Niño” (“Joys of the Lord, the Holy Child”).
The hymn recounts the arrival of the image and Christianity in the Philippines. Devotees wave their hands as they sing the chorus, a confident plea for God to have mercy on his people.
The last Mass each day is immediately followed by a Sinulog dance during which the congregation erupts in jubilant shouts of “Pit Señor” (Call on the Lord)— a prayer of penance, adoration, thanksgiving, and petition on behalf of people in various life situations. Priests and religious dance as they bear the Santo Niño statue, while lay people lead the prayers.
“And that’s exactly why this festival has impressed me so much,” Br. Vincentius said, “because I feel glad celebrating the feast though I only took part in the novena. It is truly a feast.”
On the fiesta’s eve, following a parade at Cebu’s Mactan Channel, a morning Mass with a reenactment of the first baptism in the Philippines, a procession, and a vigil Mass that attract up to three million people, a bishop leads the dance.
It lasts for an hour, punctuated by fireworks and the recitation of prayers that are customarily offered to the Divine Infant and his Most Holy Name every Friday in the basilica.
On fiesta day, Cebu’s Archbishop Jose Palma offers Mass at daybreak, while other bishops from across the Philippines lead Masses throughout the day.
On the city’s main streets, multiple troupes dance the Sinulog as part of a grand parade and competition organized by the government and private sector.
While Santo Niño de Cebu gave Br. Vincentius’ faith a new dimension, the Holy Child ushered Anders Moberg, a 61-year-old Swede, into the Catholic Church.
In 2013, Moberg met the woman who would become his wife, Jucell Marie.
A Filipina nursing assistant, she had migrated from Cebu to Sweden. Both unmarried single parents, Moberg and Jucell developed a relationship. Eventually, he proposed to marry her in a civil ceremony.
Jucell said no, believing that marriage is a sacrament that must be celebrated in church. She also started praying to Santo Niño for Moberg to enter the Catholic Church freely.
After 10 years, Moberg asked again to marry her, this time in a church ceremony. In preparation, the two went to a priest, who told them he could preside over their wedding because they were both Christian.
But at that point in the conversation, Moberg interrupted the priest.
“He told him that he wanted to become Catholic before we were to marry,” Jucell, now 38, told The Pillar.
“The priest asked him whether this was his will or he felt under pressure to become Catholic because of me. Anders told the priest he wanted to join the Church ‘because it is the right thing to do.’”
Hearing that, Jucell said that she felt so much joy that she started to cry.
Moberg became a Catholic on March 31, 2023. On April 15, the couple married at St. Lars Parish in Uppsala.
Nowadays, they and their children regularly pray with the family Santo Niño image and go to Mass at St. Ilian Catholic Church in Enköping.
Meanwhile, in the Portuguese capital Lisbon, Lani Cuyos Yu, president of the Association of Filipinos in Portugal has been helping organize the Fiesta Señor for years.
A migrant from Cebu, she told The Pillar that she had enthroned her Santo Niño and Blessed Virgin Mary images in her living room as reminders to converse with God as she would with a friend, especially to start her day.
Filipinos in Portugal started celebrating Fiesta Señor in the early 2010s with the simple recitation of the preparatory novena and the offering of Mass on the feast day in the city’s Church of Corpo Santo.
Devotion to Santo Niño de Cebu moved as the Filipino Catholics in Lisbon changed centers, from Corpo Santo to the house of the Society of the Divine Word, to the Church of the Magdalene, now the parish of the patriarchate’s English-speaking Catholics.
Former Lisbon Patriarch Cardinal Manuel Clemente celebrated a Mass with the Filipino community on the feast of Santo Niño at the Estrela Basilica, and Filipinos in colorful costumes began performing a Sinulog dance on the basilica’s esplanade.
Yu said Santo Niño helped draw Filipinos and Portuguese people together.
“When we tell them that Santo Niño came from Portugal, they see how the image has come full circle,” she said. “They also appreciate our celebration given that the public role of the Church has receded.”
“The Portuguese priests see the importance of the devotion toward a society where faith has a strong footing and are happy to join us as a community in which there is a big role for the priest.”
The 53-year-old has prayed to Santo Niño for young Filipinos in Portugal who live on a highly secularized continent.
“My prayer is that they may stick to the commandment of loving one another, because if they stick with that they are on the right path,” Yu said. “If they love and serve people, they are being Christ-like.”
Portuguese explorer Ferdinand Magellan and missionaries led by the Spaniard Fr. Pedro de Valderrama, sailing under the Spanish Crown, brought the image known today as Santo Niño de Cebu to the Philippines in 1521.
The statue was given as a baptismal present to Cebu’s Queen Humahay, who took the Christian name Juana on April 14 that year. Her husband, King Humabon, had taken the name Carlos and received a bust of Jesus wearing the Crown of Thorns.
In celebration, the Cebuanos who received baptism danced in honor of the Christ Child. This dance, with steps reminiscent of a flowing river, is called “sinug” or “sinulog,” Cebuano words that mean “like the water current.”
Complex local politics infused with hostility toward the European colonizers threatened to erase devotion to Santo Niño. Magellan was killed in battle on Cebu’s Mactan Island, the remainder of his fleet departed, and many natives apostatized.
Years later, another Spanish expedition, led by Miguel Lopez de Legazpi and accompanied by Augustinian friars, arrived, as much to accelerate Philippine Christianization as strengthen Spanish rule.
On April 28, 1565, in a hut in the burnt then-village of Cebu, Juan Camus, one of Legazpi’s sailors, found the image that Queen Juana had received.
The image was carried in procession to a makeshift church in what is recognized as the first Fiesta Señor.
To avoid being impeded by Easter, the fiesta, first held each April, was moved to January, the month of the Most Holy Name of Jesus. (The Cebu archdiocese is formally known as the Archdiocese of the Most Holy Name of Jesus in Cebu).
This year, the 504th since Santo Niño’s arrival and the 460th after its rediscovery, The Pillar witnessed the inaugural event of Fiesta Señor in Cebu: a traditional, penitential procession called Walk with Jesus, held in the dark before dawn Jan. 9.
A river of candles lit by the throng, estimated at 160,000, surrounded the flower-laden carriage of the Santo Niño image as it streamed downtown in Cebu City toward the basilica. Those present prayed the rosary and sang hymns for the Holy Child, whose feast is being celebrated this Catholic jubilee year with the theme “Santo Niño: Hope of the Pilgrim Church.”
The image was carried by friars, led by the basilica’s rector Fr. Andres Rivera, Jr., to a niche by the basilica’s outdoor sanctuary amid pealing bells, rising incense, passionate singing, waving hands, and cries of “Viva, Santo Niño” (“Long live the Holy Child”)” and “Pit Señor!”
At the Mass following Santo Niño’s enthronement — the first of more than 100 Masses during the novena and feast days — Rivera preached.
“Indeed, Santo Niño himself is the people’s only hope, not the things we count ourselves lucky to receive after we ask him for them, not the priests standing in front of you, and certainly not the people whose smiling images are hung by our streets,” he said in Cebuano, referring to the faces on campaign posters in this Philippine election year.
“The attractions we sometimes tightly cling to have limits and will all pass,” he went on. “The words of man are sweet to the ears but with the passing of time are like clouds that vanish, blown away by lying lips.”
“God alone is our hope, because he does not break his promises. He promised salvation to a defeated people and gave his only-begotten Son so that those who believe in him may not die but have eternal life.”
“This has been fulfilled in our history and is in fact the reason we are together this morning to once more give him thanks,” Rivera said.
“Santo Niño is the image of the great love of God who arrived in Cebu to introduce himself to our ancestors, drawing them to the Catholic faith, inspiring them to build the Church where they can go to pray that He may have mercy on them.”
Thank you for sharing about this devotion! My family has had a devotion to the Holy Infant of Prague for as long as I can remember but I had no idea a similar devotion existed that was so popular. I wonder how many other Santo Ninos there are in the wide world of Catholicism.
Filipino American here! I danced the sinulog years ago. That was my first time hearing about the devotion. I still didn't know how important it was to us Filipino Catholics until I read this article. I hope there will be more articles on the Church in the Philippines!