Feast of the Holy Crucifix of Aracoeli (Babbaluti Festival)

A tradition spanning over four centuries

The Feast of the Holy Crucifix of Aracoeli is one of the most deeply felt and defining traditions of San Marco d'Alunzio, a charming medieval village perched in the Nebrodi mountains, in the province of Messina. Established in 1612, the festival has been repeated for centuries with a ritual that has remained almost unchanged, offering those who witness it the sensation of a suspended time. It is popularly known as the Babbaluti Festival, named after the absolute protagonists of the day.

Who are the Babbaluti

The Babbaluti are thirty-three confreres—a number that symbolically recalls the years of Christ—who, by vow, wear a blue hooded robe that makes them unrecognizable. On their feet, they wear thick, hand-knitted wool socks called i piruna. They are the ones who carry the simulacrum of the Crucifix on their shoulders through the steep streets of the village, accompanying it with the poignant and repeated invocation in the local dialect "Signuri, Misericordia, Pietà!". The origin of these thirty-three hooded figures is not entirely clear: some see in them the years of Christ, others a remnant of ancient medieval sacred representations.

The statue and the sapurcu

The heart of the devotion is the 17th-century wooden statue of the Crucifix, kept in the Church of Maria Santissima dell'Aracoeli, at whose feet appears the image of the Virgin of Sorrows, the Madonna of the Seven Sorrows. In the afternoon, Christ is laid in the sapurcu, a monumental sepulchre decorated with red and yellow drapes and illuminated by hundreds of candles, evoking the praetorium of Pilate.

A festival within a festival

The celebration takes place in the Church of Aracoeli, built around 1600 along Via Aluntina, and also involves the village's Mother Church. The setting is San Marco d'Alunzio itself, a jewel of red marble and churches that was the ancient Aluntium, where the Babbaluti procession becomes a collective experience of great emotional intensity, capable of attracting faithful, curious onlookers, and visitors from all over Sicily.