The week before the beginning of the Lenten period, the parochial community of Ciminna has planned in the various churches of the main neighborhoods, Eucharistic days of reparation, of suffrage for the deceased and in preparation for the Lenten period.
The Confraternity of the SS. Viatico, commonly called Thursday, celebrates its feast in the church, where it has its headquarters, with a traditional rite, unique in its kind, “a comunioni a pecuru”: the confreres at the moment of communion cross the central corridor of the church on their knees and with their hands on the ground like a sheep (a pecuru) to head towards the altar to receive Holy Communion, asking for forgiveness for the lascivious acts committed during the Carnival period. The confreres, like so many sheep, go towards the Good Shepherd to be refreshed and led on the right path.
It is a rite that has been celebrated since 1703 as prescribed in the Rule of the Confraternity, in chapter XVIII: “On every last Thursday of Carnival, the exposition of the Venerable Sacrament is to be done in the oratory, with the Congregation meeting in public, and this to distract the faithful from the carnival games, and to avoid any occasion of sin”.
