The main streets of Guadalupe, Cebu City's most populous barangay, will be filled with devotees of Our Lady of Guadalupe whose annual fiesta includes a motorcade, street processions and novenas starting Monday, Dec. 1.For the first time, two of Cebu's oldest parishes, San Nicolas and Guadalupe, will co-celebrate the “traslacion”, which means “transfer” in Spanish, of the image which is believed by devotees to be miraculous. The image will be brought from its shrine in Guadalupe to San Nicolas in a motorcade on Dec. 1 after a 4 p.m. Mass at the Guadalupe parish church. The arrangement retraces the history of the image back to its original home, the San Nicolas Parish, which used to be the mother parish of Guadalupe until the 1930s. San Nicolas was the first parish erected in Cebu in 1584. The parish of Our Lady of Guadalpue de Cebu marks its 75th founding anniversary or diamond jubilee this year. Over the decades, the faithful recall amazing stories of the image of the Virgin first appearing in a cave in Banawa. They later traced the growth of the devotion throughout Cebu until she was declared the patroness of the Cebu archdiocese. On Monday at San Nicolas, the icon will be met by the Parish Pastoral Team, headed by parish priest Fr. Trinidad Silva, and other groups, for a welcome Mass at 6 p.m. An overnight vigil will follow with different parish and barangay groups taking turns spending at least one hour in group prayer before the image. On Dec. 2, Tuesday, San Nicolas residents will escort the Virgin back to her archdiocesan shrine in Guadalupe via motorcade at 4:30 p.m. The motorcade will be met by Guadalupe residents at the corner of V. Rama and M. Velez in front of Jollibee. From there a foot procession will accompany the image to the shrine, for the 6 p.m. First Day Novena Mass, to be celebrated by Bishop Julito Cortes. From Dec. 9 to 11, the image will be at the Cebu Metropolitan Cathdral for a triduum or three-day period of prayers. The feast day is on Dec. 12. Based on historical research, the icon used to stay in the convent office of San Nicolas, when Guadalupe was still Sitio Banawan, under the San Nicolas. According to tradition, a vision of Our Lady of Guadalupe was seen in the cave of Kalunasan, which was then part of Sitio Banawan. The parish priest of San Nicolas then lent the image to the people of Banawa on a yearly basis, so they could celebrate Our Lady’s feast on Dec. 12. The image would then be returned to San Nicolas on the Saturday after Dec. 12. This practice went on until sometime in the 1920s when a strange occurrence took place. During the procession back to San Nicolas, upon reaching the spot where a huge acacia tree still stands today, the image, which was tightly secured with ropes on the palanquin carried by four men, fell down. It landed on the ground upright. In full view of the participants, the image rotated 180 degrees upon landing, and faced the direction where it came from, according to accounts handed down over the years. Awe-struck devotees saw this as a sign that the Virgin of Guadalupe didn't want to leave their place anymore so they turned back to the makeshift chapel and reported the incident to their parish priest in San Nicolas. The priest allowed the permanent stay of the Virgin in the chapel, and he elevated sitio Banawan into a “visita” where periodic but regular religious activities would be conducted. The people of Banawa welcomed their patroness with open hearts and generous gifts. The Labra family donated a sizeable area for a permanent chapel, which is now the site of the archdiocesan shrine. The Quijada, Datan and Gabutan families took care of the image and led the regular devotions in the chapel. Other families took charge of the cave where the vision was seen. Because of the strong devotion of the people, the “visita” was elevated into a parish on May 1, 1933. The pastor of San Nicolas, Fr. Emilio Mercado, also became the concurrent and first pastor of the new parish in Guadalupe. This year is the diamond jubilee of the Our Lady of Guadalupe parish. Msgr. Carlito Pono, parish priest, and Louie Nacorda, chairman of the 2008 Traslacion de la Virgen Project, announced the joint celebration with the San Nicolas parish. | 
