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The Sicilian capital, Palermo, has a long history of cultural fusion. Her newcomers from Sri Lanka kissed St. Rosalia.
By Emma Bubola
Photos via Gianni Cipriano
Report from Palermo, Sicily
After sprinkling rose petals on the golden statues of Ganesh and Shiva and reciting prayers to the blue-skinned, eight-armed gods, the Hindu devotees left their temple and headed to a festival in honor of their deities, the Catholic Saint Rosalia.
“To the goddess!” said Swasthika Sasiyendran, 23, after swapping her gold and white sari for a T-shirt with Rosalia’s image.
Every year, at the height of Sicily’s summer heat, Palermo is filled with festive lighting fixtures and scooters honking their horns as other people gather to celebrate Rosalia, the city’s patron saint. Among the thousands of people who sign up for the procession, which culminates with an imposing statue of the saint carried through the streets, are members of the city’s Sri Lankan Tamil community, among Rosalia’s most fervent supporters.
Palermo is prone to this type of mix. It is a city between continents, formed through the crossing of Greek, Byzantine, Arab, Norman and Spanish civilizations, which turned it many years ago into a cosmopolitan, open and subtle city.
The confusion between beliefs, origins and traditions contrasts sharply with a developing political discourse in Italy and Europe that insists on establishing barriers between nations and immutable religions and identities.
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