Benvenuti nel portale dell'Azienda Provinciale Turismo Enna

Holy Week

One of the more evocative moment to visit Enna is, no doubt, the holy week, which rites go back to the Spanish domination period (XV-XVII century), when the “Confraternite” (already existing like arts and crafts guilds) was authorized to form freely as religious organizations to promote the Faith; receiving from the sovereigns definite norms and privileges.
They participate to the town life with definite offices: some supported the poor, others the invalids and others the condemned. In 1740 in Enna existed already 34 between confraternities, companies and colleges. Today survive just 15 of them, organized by statutes. Besides enliven the Holy Week, they provide to solemnize their Patron Saint’s feast, organize and participate actively to the more significant religious events of the city.

Today’s brothers are not the miners and the farmers they used to be once, but professionals, students and clerks; the only surviving foreclosure is sex: just men are admitted. From Palm Sunday to the late morning of the Good Wednesday the 15 confraternities, each in the fixed day and hour, starting in procession and each of them, from its church (every Confraternity “belong” to a church), goes to the Cathedral for the solemn adoration of the Eucharist, rite named by Enna’s people “l’ura”. The culminating moment of the Easter’s celabrations falls during the Good Friday. In the early afternoon all the confraternities arrive to the Cathedral and there start to arrange themselves for the Solemn Procession. There are more than two thousands hooded brothers that, in a rigorous pre-established order and dead silence and sadness precede the “Vare” (great religious statues) of dead Christ and of the “Madonna Addolorata”, starting the long funeral procession that will go through almost the whole city. The Passion Company open the procession breaking the crowd. The brothers bring on same trays 24 symbols of Christ’s Martyrdom: they are named “I MISTERI” that is “The mysteries”: the cross, the bag with the thirty denarii, the crown, the lantern, the cock, the nails and the tools for the flagellation. The others confraternities follows and this well-behaving procession slowly proceed along the city’s streets until it arrives to the Cemetery’s church, ex Cappuccini’s Convent, where the benediction is given to the faithful by the reliquary cross, containing the thorn of Christ’s crown. Afterwards the procession come back towards the Cathedral.

The Holy Week’s rites in Enna continue on Easter Sunday with the ceremony called “a paci” (“the peace”), when in the middle of a joyful bells ringing in the central square next to the Cathedral, the dead Christ’s and the Madonna’s statues meet and triumphally are brought inside the church where they are exposed to the faithful’s veneration for a week. On Sunday, the next after Easter (Low Sunday), called “in Albis” Sunday, the Confraternity of SS. Salvatore and the College of S. Giuseppe, with the rural dean and the faithful make a procession in the neighbourhood of the Lombardy Castle, where, from the top of the Cerere’s fortress is given the solemn benediction to the fields. Therefore people come back to the Cathedral, stopping before in Piazza Mazzini, where take place the traditional and last ceremony called “La Spartenza”. In this ceremony the Confraternity of SS. Salvatore and of the College of San Giuseppe take possession of respective “fercoli” again (the “fercoli” are the typical supports of the saint’s statues in the cities’s feasts) that is of the “resurrected son” and of the “Mother” and bring them back in the churches where they belong, to symbolize the necessary separation for the earthly conclusion of Christ’s mission, and he come back to his father.