Ozamiz prepares to mark 'Festival of the Huts'

Catholic Church officials in Ozamiz City in Mindanao have started preparations to mark the archdiocese’s yearly Festival of the Huts in October. Local Catholics mark the “Pangilin sa mga Payag (Festival of the Huts)" by making a pilgrimage to the Virgin Mary at the Cotta Shrine. “Here, the pilgrim meets the mystery of God and discovers His countenance of love and mercy ... Thus, the primary commitment of the holy journey is that of evangelization which is often ingrained in the holy places themselves," Ozamiz Archbishop Jesus Dosado said in an article posted on the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of the Philippines (CBCP) news site. Local clergy president Fr. Edgar Canama said the presbyterium will meet in Oroquieta City to map out the details of the annual festival. Dosado said the festival finds its roots in the bible account about the tents used by God’s people in the desert. Pilgrimages lead to the hut of meeting with the Word of God, he said. “When they are done by a parish community, by an ecclesial group, by a diocesan assembly or by wider groupings, pilgrimage becomes a sign of ecclesial life," he said. The shrine is also the "hut meeting in reconciliation," Dosado said, adding that as the pilgrim confesses his sins, he is forgiven, and becomes a renewed person, and experiences divine mercy and grace. "The goal of pilgrimages must be the hut of the Eucharistic meeting with Christ. If the Bible is the book of pilgrims par excellence, the Eucharist is the bread that sustains them on their way," the bishop added. Immaculate Conception Cathedral Parish Chairman of Committee on Liturgy Sr. Gloria Villareal said the Festival of the Huts will be opened with a concelebrated mass at the Shrine of Nuestra Senora del Triumfo de la Cruz (Birhen sa Cotta). “All faithful from twenty two parishes and two sub-parishes of Misamis Occidental are expected to join the festival to pay homage and take part in the pilgrimage," Villareal said. Centuries-old tradition For more than two centuries, local Catholics have been going to the Shrine of the Virgin at Cotta. The devotion goes back to the year 1756 when the Jesuit missionaries brought from Spain a statuette of the Immaculate Conception and placed it in Cotta where a chapel was built. During the Great Jubilee in 2000, Catholics also went on pilgrimage to the shrine which has become symbol of the city. –VVP, GMANews.TV