WTI Magazine #67    2015 September, 4
Author : folclore.it      Translation by:

Every five years, in the years ending in 0 and 5, hundreds of people from Pove del Grappa, near Vicenza, prepare the celebration of Christ, commonly called the Five-Year Celebrations in Honor of the Divine Crucified. The festivities in honor of the crucified seem to go back to ancient times, every ten years, and recall a legend that says that the wooden crucifix of the fifteenth century, still present in the parish church of San Vigilio, was a gift from a Bohemian pilgrim who, passing through Pove on his pilgrimage to Rome in the Jubilee year of 1300, donated it to the priest as a gesture of gratitude for the hospitality.

Legend has it that the crucifix was made with an olive trunk in two days and one night.

Even today, the streets of the small town welcome hundreds of people who propose, in historical costumes, moments drawn from the Old and New Testament, shows, exhibitions and thematic meetings and representation of the night of death and resurrection of Jesus.

Highlight of the event is on Sunday, with the great and intense procession made of about 600 people, which retraces the events of the Old Testament: the Passion, Death and Resurrection of Christ. The procession is scheduled for the first two Sundays in September and runs through the streets of the village, decorated with big bows, lights and crosses.

The atmosphere is full of sanctity and very charming and exudes a strong sense of sharing for citizens, so much that this celebration is an opportunity for many migrants to return to visit to their native land.