The story
Santa Marian Kamalen Festival and Procession in Hagatna
Every December 8, Guam's Catholics honor Santa Marian Kamalen, the island's patron saint and a wooden statue more than 300 years old, in an islandwide procession through Hagåtña that follows a novena at the Dulce Nombre de Maria Cathedral-Basilica and loops past the capital's main streets.
A wooden statue with an ivory face and folded hands, dressed in pink and blue and normally kept in a niche behind the altar of Hagåtña's cathedral-basilica, comes down once a year to be carried through the capital on a flower-covered cart.