Holy Week 2025: Processions in Lima, Peru

In January 2018, Pope Francis encouraged the young people of Peru to ask for the intercession of the country’s saints “because it is a landed land”, with figures such as “Santa Rosa de Lima, Santo Toribio, San Juan Macías, San Francisco Solano and many others”, who surely lived with intensity of Holy Week, with their many celebrations and processions.

Eduardo Vásquez, a specialist in viceregal art, tells Ewtn News that “already in 1540, that is, five years after the Foundation of Lima” – and many years before birth, for example, of Santa Rosa or San Martín – “the first brotherhood was founded Weeks, The brotherhood of the Holy Veracruz de Caballeros”.

This brotherhood, he said, was “founded by Francisco Pizarro (Spanish founder of Lima), who was as a vocation to commemorate the passion of our Lord Jesus Christ with a penance procession on Fridays.”

Later, other brotherhoods arose that did processions during Holy Week, but after the independence of Peru and the secularization of society in the nineteenth century, several disappeared, until the 1990s.

Vásquez explains that “the various parishes, convents, city monasteries were convened, so that these ancient images have been saved again, if not centuries, decades. And this Holy Week began to revitalize.”

In this way and only in the historic center of Lima there will be more than 10 processions during this Holy Week 2025, that go to the streets with about thirty images and that congregate thousands of faithful.

Another of the processions in Lima is stars in the crucified Mr. of Rímac, an image that was found 175 years ago in a stream. The fifth Sunday of Lent to the Cathedral is usually coming and it is cultural heritage of the nation. Its central party is Good Friday.

In the Jirón de la Unión, a boulevard That it reaches the Plaza de Armas, is the Church of the Mercedarians where the images of Our Lady of La Piedad and Jesús Nazareno are preserved, who come out in procession to the Plaza de Armas. The origins of these devotions date back to the viceroyalty. Its current main date is today, Friday of Dolores.

Alejandro Olórtegui, president of the brotherhood Jesús Nazareno, explains that the image of Christ “dates from the era of the eighteenth century, which a Peruvian artisan does. But the position was kneeling. Practically within our Brotherhood we finance everything.”

Another of the oldest processions that occur in Lima per Holy Week is that of Our Lady of Solitude, whose origin dates back to the end of the 16th century and the beginning of the seventeenth. This Mariana image travels Lima every Good Friday.

Luis Leith, a devotee who had with the Virgin an intense conversion experience, shares that “we need to be more children with a mother who gave everything, who lived everything. And her word is vast: loneliness”

The brotherhood of Our Lady of Solitude was founded in 1603 with the canonical recognition of Santo Toribio de Mogrovejo, then Archbishop of Lima and patron of the Latin American Episcopate.

Luis Olivera, general secretary of the Brotherhood of Our Lady of Solitude counts on the Church where the image is preserved that “this is a chapel of the brotherhood, specifically this temple dates from 1669. By tradition it is considered that the Virgin came from Seville with the founding brothers.”

“The way the Virgin dresses, traditionally with a white dress and black shaft, emulates the ladies during the period of mourning,” he adds.

Holy Week Lima 2025

Luis Bogdanovich, manager of the Municipal Program for the recovery of the Historic Center of Lima (Prolima), explained that during Holy Week 2025 – of April 13 to 20 – the traditional processions will be held, but there will also be art exhibitions, contests such as sweet bread, conferences, among others.

The program can be consulted on the website “Lima, City of Kings”, Where you can see more details of the events.

The website emphasizes that “visiting the historic center of Lima in this season is a delight. You can enjoy the entire city, altars, palms arrangements, flower carpets and the adorns of the city prepared with a lot of care for the occasion. Own and strangers will be wrapped in our history, tradition and fascinating culture.”

More information in https://visita-lima.limaciudaddelosreyes.com.pe/es/semanasanta