00:46Nicaragua: Divine dogs dress for saintly blessing
Nicaragua: Divine dogs dress for saintly blessing
Around 2,500 worshippers attended a special church service Sunday in Masaya, Nicaragua to pay their respects to St. Lazarus, the patron saint of lepers and the ill.
Every year thousands of Catholics from all over the country attend the ceremony and bring their dogs along to be blessed by the saint.
To honour the ceremony, dog owners dressed up their pets in hats, skirts and costumes of comic-superheroes.
For the blessing, the dogs are held up to a statue of St. Lazarus and worshippers and dog owners light candles at the altar in observance.
In the Gospel of Luke, Lazarus the beggar was healed by divine intervention after dogs licked his leprous wounds. The parable of Lazarus the beggar is often conflated with the story of Lazarus of Bethany from the Gospel of John.
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Nicaragua: Divine dogs dress for saintly blessing
Around 2,500 worshippers attended a special church service Sunday in Masaya, Nicaragua to pay their respects to St. Lazarus, the patron saint of lepers and the ill.
Every year thousands of Catholics from all over the country attend the ceremony and bring their dogs along to be blessed by the saint.
To honour the ceremony, dog owners dressed up their pets in hats, skirts and costumes of comic-superheroes.
For the blessing, the dogs are held up to a statue of St. Lazarus and worshippers and dog owners light candles at the altar in observance.
In the Gospel of Luke, Lazarus the beggar was healed by divine intervention after dogs licked his leprous wounds. The parable of Lazarus the beggar is often conflated with the story of Lazarus of Bethany from the Gospel of John.