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Feast of S.Agata Patron of the city of Catania. Sicily.
Every year Catania offers its patron an extraordinary feast that can be compared to the Holy Week in Seville or to the Corpus Domini in Cuzco, Peru. In those three days the city forgets everything to focus on the festival, a mixture of devotion and folklore, which attracts up to a million people every year, including devotees and curious people. The first day is reserved for the offer of candles. A suggestive popular custom has it that the donated candles are as high or heavy as the person asking for protection. The major religious, civil and military authorities participate in the procession for the wax collection, a short tour from the furnace to the cathedral. Two eighteenth-century carriages, which once belonged to the senate that governed the city, and eleven candelore, large candles representing corporations or trades, are brought to the procession. This first day of celebration ends in the evening with a grand firework display in Piazza Duomo. The fireworks during the feast of Saint Agatha, in addition to expressing the great joy of the faithful, take on a particular meaning, because they remember that the patroness, martyred on the embers, always watches over the fire of Etna and all the fires. February 4 is the most exciting day, because it marks the first meeting of the city with the patron saint. Already in the early hours of dawn the streets of the city are populated with citizens, the devotees wearing the traditional sack (a votive gown of white canvas long up to the ankle and tightened at the waist by a cord), a black velvet cap, gloves white and waving a handkerchief which is also ironed in thick folds. It represents the night clothing that the people of Catania wore when, back in 1126, they ran to meet the relics that Gisliberto and Goselmo brought back from Constantinople. But the original nightgown, over the centuries, has also been enriched with the meaning of a penitential garment: according to some, the white cloth habit is the reinterpretation of a liturgical garment, the black beret would remind the ash of which the garment was sprinkled. penitents and the cord at the waist would represent the sackcloth. Three different keys, each kept by a different person, are necessary to open the iron gate that protects the relics in the cathedral: one holds the treasurer, the second the master of ceremonies, the third the prior of the cathedral chapter. When the third key removes the last send to the gate of the bedroom where the Bust is kept and the chapel is opened, the smiling and serene face of Saint Agatha appears from the bedroom in the growing blaze of the faithful eager to see her again. Shimmering with gold and precious gems, the bust of Saint Agatha is hoisted on the Renaissance silver fercolo, lined with red velvet, the color of the blood of martyrdom, but also the color of the kings. Before leaving the cathedral for the traditional procession along the streets of the city, Catania welcomes its patron saint with the solemn Mass of the Aurora, celebrated by H.E. Archbishop. Among the roar of the gunshots, the fercolo is loaded with the precious casket with the relics and carried in procession through the city.