CAGAYAN DE ORO, Philippines – One of the Catholic priests who started the now-traditional annual procession of the Black Nazarene in Cagayan de Oro since 2009 has attributed the dramatic decline in attendance during the Traslacion on Tuesday, January 9, to what he called the excessively tight police security in the city before and during the religious event. Monsignor Rey Monsanto, the parish priest of Our Lady Fatima Church in Barangay Camaman-an, said the ring of police officers and soldiers prevented devotees from approaching the 17th-century life-size replica of the mulatto image of a kneeling and cross-bearing Black Nazarene during the procession. Monsanto, the parish priest of Cagayan de Oro’s Jesus Nazareno Church in 2009, was the priest who requested…
