When I learned that, according to the General Roman Calendar, the feast day of the Our Lady of Victory, also known as the Our Lady of the Holy Rosary, is October 7, I wondered why, in Victorias, it is celebrated on April 26.
When the Catholic states won over the fleet of the Ottoman Empire at the Battle of Lepanto in the Gulf of Patras in Greece on October 7, 1571, Pope Pius V, who asked all the faithful at that time to pray the Holy Rosary to help win the Catholic fleet win the battle, that day was declared by Pope Pius V as the feast of the Our Lady of Victory. She was later known as the Our Lady of the Holy Rosary.
Victorias was named after its patroness, Nuestra Señora de Las Victorias (read Chapter 4 here), and the town used to celebrate the feast on October 7. But in a memorabilia prepared years ago for the town fiesta, I read that it was moved from October 7, which is in a rainy month, to a day in the dry season.
So, why did the parish, probably in consultation with the local officials then, choose April 26?
I found the answer in the 1953 compilation.
Thanks to Ms. Christine Mae Sarito, who downloaded the Compilation from the archives of the National Library and made it available to the people of Victorias, we can now answer the question.
On Chapter 17 of the history of Victorias (read here), I wrote about the life of the people of Victorias during World War II. In my research for that chapter, I stumbled upon a date, April 26, 1945 (which is mistakenly written as "April 26, 1944" in the Compilation. The American forces arrived in Negros island only in 1945).
That date is very significant to the people of Victorias. It was the date the first American soldiers arrived in Victorias.
During the war, all church activities stopped. There were no baptism, burial masses, blessings, and even weddings at the church. Even the parish priest at that time, Fr. Vicente Luzada, had to flee for his life.
Maybe, years after the war, when the October 7 fiesta celebrations were always rained out, the parish priest, parishioners and town officials began discussions about moving the town fiesta to a day in the dry season. They probably had many dates as an option, including other important dates in the Catholic calendar, but must have settled, in the end, to one very important date in the history of Victorias.
During the two years of living a life under the Japanese colonizers that brought cruelty, hunger, sickness and death, the people of Victorias prayed to the Virgin for help.
On April 26, 1945, their prayers were answered.
The arrival of the first American soldiers in Victorias on that day, a Thursday, brought joy and happiness to the people, knowing that freedom, as well as the old ways of living in peace, would finally return to Victorias.
The feast of the Our Lady of Victory is celebrated by the parish with an early morning procession of Her image and a concelebrated mass presided by the Bishop of the Diocese of Bacolod.
Let's bring back the old traditions of celebrating the April 26 fiesta in the name of Nuestra Señora de Las Victorias.
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Attached are the screenshots above of the pages from the 1953 Compilation showing the listing of April 26, 1944 (should be 1945), as a significant day in the history of Victorias.
Note: Words written in neon green are links. Do click them.
Chapter 27: Don Gonzalo Ditching and His Legacy in Vic Victorias City (Part 1)
Complete history blog: "Ang Kasaysayan sang Victorias"
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