CNA Staff, Mar 31, 2020 / 17:01 pm
Local media in Nicaragua are reporting that despite the nation's bishops' conference suspending Mass and prohibiting large gatherings, the mayor of Granada is going ahead with an annual pilgrimage that the bishops had canceled.
For more than 150 years, Catholics in Nicaragua have venerated an image of Jesus del Rescate (Jesus of the Rescue) in Popoyuapa, near the city of Rivas. The image represents the crowning of thorns and the flogging of Christ.
Normally there is an annual pilgrimage to the image, which pilgrims make by wagon and on foot, during the "Week of Sorrows" that marks "the final stretch" of the time of Lent, according to ACI Prensa, CNA's Spanish language news partner.
However, the bishops have said that this year it will not be possible to carry it out in the traditional way, given the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic.