– Marco Carvalho
Macau’s small Damanese community announced the decision to cancel the feast of Our Lady of Candelaria, the patron saint of the little Indian territory that remained under Portuguese administration until 1961. The celebration was initially scheduled for last Sunday and it was due to at the church of Saint Joseph’s Seminary.
The epidemic outbreak that spread all over China from the mainland city of Wuhan extended a veil of fear over Macau, and the celebrations pertaining to the Catholic Church’s festive calendar have not escaped the wave of cancellations announced locally in the last weeks. Initially scheduled for last Sunday, the 2nd of February, and promoted by the Damanese community that works and lives in the territory, the Feast of Our Lady of Candelaria was canceled by the members of the community themselves, O Clarim has learned from the promoters of the initiative.
“It is a decision that has caused us all some sadness, but we do not want to be a source of problems to those friends of ours that usually take part in the celebration,” Elias Colaço explained.
A year ago, almost a hundred devotees – including Damanese, Macanese and faithful from other origins – joined a celebration that evokes a long-forgotten page of the History of the Portuguese Expansion in the Indian subcontinent: the reconquest of Daman.
On February 2, 1559, D. Constantino de Bragança took over the city, at the time a thriving commercial bazaar halfway between Goa and Vasai. One of the first decisions made by the 7th Portuguese Viceroy of India was to order that a Mass should be held in the city center.
The tradition has taken root ever since then and it has gained a new lease of life in recent years, both in Daman and among the Damanese communities spread all over the world. In Macau, the initiative to celebrate the feast of the patron saint of Daman came about in the early 1990s. Now, the deadly coronavirus that spread throughout China from the city of Wuhan has extinguished the brightness of a celebration that should have seen its 13th consecutive year this year: “We followed the evolution of things and we understood that the best solution would be to cancel the celebration,” Elias Colaço said.
According to the latest official figures, released by the Chinese authorities this Thursday, the number of people who died from the new coronavirus had increased to 563 , with a record of more than 28,000 cases of infection, Beijing officials announced.
According to the China Disease Prevention and Control Center, all fatalities recorded between Wednesday and Thursday occurred in Hubei, the province that is at the epicenter of the epidemic outbreak. The number of people infected in Chinese territory is rapidly increasing. In Macau, ten cases of infection have been confirmed so far. The Government ordered, on Tuesday, the closure of the local casinos for at least two weeks over fears the coronavirus might be spread through gambling venues.
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