Updated at: 0920 PST, Saturday, January 09, 2010
MANILA: Hundreds of thousands of people shed their footwear and prayed for relief from natural disasters Saturday in a religious procession across the capital of the mainly Roman Catholic Philippines.
The annual festival centres on a black icon of a cross-bearing Jesus Christ, which many Filipinos believe can perform miracles to cure the sick, drive away bad luck and bring prosperity.
Tropical storms, floods, landslides, and maritime disasters killed nearly 2,000 people across the Philippines in 2009, a year in which an election-linked massacre claimed 57 lives and a volcano also erupted. More than 80 percent of Filipinos are Catholic and Holguera estimated that at least two million people in this city of more than 10 million had joined or watched the procession.
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