Holy Week and “Diavolata” in Adrano

Traditions

Easter days are deeply felt by the population of Adrano, who have preserved over time traditions and rites of great spectacle and intense emotional content.
The celebrations begin on "Palm Sunday", with the representation of the "Via Crucis" which has its climax with the scene of the Crucifixion. On Holy Thursday the poignant procession of the seventeenth-century statue of Christ at the Column takes place. The procession, led by the clergy and by the many Confraternities distinguished by their historical banner, starts from the church of San Sebastiano and winds along Corso Garibaldi, to reach the Mother Church. The men who carry the wheel on their shoulders imitate the sufferings of Jesus under the weight of the cross: they walk with slow steps and adopt a strange gait of three steps forward and two steps back, causing the wheel to stagger at times. The procession dissolves late at night, after having taken the statue to visit the various churches where beautiful sepulchres are set up.
On Good Friday the procession of the Addolorata takes place, carried on the shoulders by a large number of girls and artisans barbers, who goes in search of the Son. In the evening, the Dead Christ, "'U Lizzanti", is carried on the shoulders through the main streets of the city by young university students with the traditional pointed headdress and accompanied by the civil authorities and the Confraternities, who wear the colored hoods of their respective orders. Along the way, the crowd sings a funeral song of great emotional effect in choir.
The resurrection of Christ is proclaimed in the night hours of Saturday. During the ceremony, a large 18th century tarpaulin is hoisted in the presbytery area together with the statue of the Risen Christ: when the cloth is hoisted, some candles, placed at the foot of the statue, are extinguished and the farmers of the past, based on how many they remained lit they drew auspices for the harvest.
On the morning of Easter Sunday the three statues of the Savior, the Madonna and the Angel are carried around the city, followed in the late morning, in Piazza Umberto, by the sacred eighteenth-century representation of the Devil, in jargon "I Diavulazzi 'i Pasqua", which has been renewed for 250 years and has been handed down from father to son. The main characters are the devils Lucifer, Beelzebub, Astarot, Death, eternal enemy of man, Humanity, symbol of hope, and Archangel Michael, adversary of the devil. The devils try to convince Humanity to remain damned, as the corpse of Jesus Christ, who has risen, is no longer in the tomb, but the Archangel Michael intervenes and definitively defeats Lucifer, freeing Humanity. Following, but only from 1980, the representation of Angelicata, which with the Diavolata forms the work of Anselmo Laudani "The Resurrection"; in it, two Angels offer gifts to the Madonna and to the Risen Christ, who proclaims her Queen of Heaven. After the sacred representation, in front of the church of Santa Chiara, the meeting between Mary and Jesus takes place, the so-called "Peace": the Madonna, who since the morning was in search of the risen Son, finally meets the Savior, touches the wound of the Son and an Angel announces the redemption of men to humanity.
The representation of the Devil, for some years, has been re-proposed in the evening, in a natural setting of rare beauty, made even more suggestive by an artistic and skilful ambient lighting.

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