The Moreneta will be paraded in procession on Sunday for the first time this century.
The event is being held to coincide with the millennium of the founding of the Monastery of Montserrat.
BarcelonaThe Moreneta (Brown Virgin Mary) will be carried out in procession this Sunday for the first time since 1997. Montserrat Abbey celebrates the Feast of the Solemnity of Our Lady of Montserrat in the millennium year of the monastery's founding, which will include the procession of the Romanesque statue for the first time this century.
To find the last procession of the Moreneta (Brown Virgin Mary), we must go back 28 years. It was also on April 27, in 1997, coinciding with the fiftieth anniversary of the enthronement of Our Lady of Montserrat. On that occasion, more than 10,000 people gathered at the abbey. By this weekend, days before the celebration, 5,000 people had already reserved places to attend the liturgy, which begins on Saturday.
In fact, given the expected high attendance at the celebration, the Catalan Traffic Service and the Mossos d'Esquadra (Catalan Police) have designed a special operation and will activate traffic, public order, and citizen security officers in the area. Traffic jams are also expected on the C-55, and the organizers recommend arriving by public transport and avoiding private cars. In this regard, the commissioner of the millennium celebration, Bernat Juliol, recommends that people make a reservation online and access the monastery by rack railway or air, given that "the access road and parking are limited."
The first movements of the day will be around 10:30 a.m., when the sanctuary's parish priest, Father Joan M. Mayol, will remove the image of the Moreneta from its throne and present it to the abbot of Montserrat, Manel Gasch Hurios. Gasch will be in charge of lowering the Romanesque statue to the entrance of the chapel, where the prior and subprior of the abbey, Jordi Puigdevall and Bernat Juliol, will be waiting. They will then take it to the main altar of the Basilica of Santa María, where the thurifer, deacons, and all members of the community will be present. It is at this moment that the image of the Moreneta will be placed on the bayard (a type of litter that will serve as its base), which dates from 1916 and has been specially restored for the occasion.
Procession from the Basilica
For the procession commemorating the millennium of Montserrat, the Romanesque statue will be protected by a canopy that was used in 1947, when the feast of the enthronement of the Virgin of Montserrat was celebrated. In the first section of the procession, leaving the basilica and crossing the atrium, the Schola Cantorum of the Choir of Montserrat will be responsible for carrying the Virgin. The monks of the Benedictine community of Montserrat will then take over, carrying the Virgin to the altar.
This Sunday, Mass will bring together all the choirs associated with the monastery, the Choir of Montserrat, the Schola Cantorum, and the Montserrat Music Chapel. The floral decoration for the occasion has been created by the Catalan Federation of Catifaires, which will decorate part of the Plaza de Santa Maria.
After the mass, a sardana dance and a concert by the Vallès Symphony Orchestra are planned. The musicians themselves will perform on the eve of the millennium celebration, where there will also be other events such as a drone show that will draw the silhouette of the Black Madonna in the sky at night.
