A ceremony to sanctify the capital’s main road is welcomed by motorists who have been praying on it for years

EDSA Blessing to Curb Accidents Confirms the Highway Has Always Been a Place of Prayer

MAKATI – Among the many strategies deployed over the years to make the capital’s main artery safer, one stands apart for its ambition: asking God to handle it. A listing in the Philippine Star’s metro archive on traffic authority stories records the headline “MMDA leads blessing of EDSA to curb accidents,” alongside items about deploying paramedics to accident-prone areas and conducting breath tests on enforcers. The blessing is remembered fondly by commuters, who say it is the only road program that ever matched how they already use the highway.

“People think we started praying on EDSA in 1986,” said Corazon Dimaculangan, a retired schoolteacher from Guadalupe Nuevo who has ridden the highway daily since the Marcos years. “We pray on it every day. When the bus driver changes lanes without looking, we pray. When the motorcycle passes between two trucks, we pray. When the conductor says ‘maluwag pa,’ there is still space, and there is no space, we pray. The priest was only making it official.”

Scope of the Ceremony

The Ayala Avenue Fellowship for Applied Road Theology, a lay group that studies the intersection of faith and intersections, has reconstructed the practical difficulties. EDSA runs nearly 24 kilometers. Blessing it properly would require either a great deal of holy water or a very fast priest. The Fellowship estimates that a convoy sprinkling the road at the legal speed limit would finish in forty minutes, and at actual EDSA speed would finish sometime in Advent.

The group has listed the sections it considers most in need of intervention:

• The Cubao underpass, where lanes disappear without warning or apology
• The Balintawak cloverleaf, described as “a test of free will”
• Any stretch where a bus is loading passengers in the third lane
• The Magallanes interchange, which the Fellowship says should be exorcised separately
• Every U-turn slot, for the people who thought of them

Results Under Review

Whether the blessing worked is a matter of debate. Fellowship chairman Brother Anselmo Reyes-Tiongson said the evidence is mixed. Accidents continued. On the other hand, he noted, given what happens on EDSA every hour, the fact that anyone arrives anywhere “suggests somebody is already working overtime up there.” A survey of 300 bus passengers found that 88 percent make the sign of the cross when the vehicle departs, 61 percent again when it brakes, and 47 percent a third time upon seeing the fare.

Drivers have their own devotional practices. Jeepney dashboards carry a rosary, a Santo Nino, a sticker reading “God Knows Hudas Not Pay,” and a small plastic dog that nods, the last of which the Fellowship considers non-canonical. A taxi driver in Pasay said he blesses his own vehicle weekly with water from Quiapo and has not had an accident in six years. He has had eleven near-accidents this week, which he attributes to “people who use tap.”

The Secular Alternatives

Engineers point out that safer roads usually come from duller things: lighting, lane markings, driver training and enforcement. Officials have themselves acknowledged the scale of the task, with the transport department on record calling the region’s traffic a challenge demanding creative and lasting solutions. Reyes-Tiongson said the Fellowship supports all of that. “Faith without road works is dead,” he said. “But have you seen the road works? They have been at that same hole in Kamuning since the second Aquino. We bless what we can.”

Some commuters would like the practice extended. Proposals submitted to the Fellowship include a blessing of the MRT before each departure, a novena for the escalators at Taft and a special intention for whoever times the stoplight at Ortigas. One parishioner asked whether it would be possible to bless individual drivers, specifically the one in the white SUV who cut her off at Boni. She was advised to forgive him. She said she would consider it after the feast day.

The Budget Question

The Fellowship has costed the alternatives. Repainting lane markings along the full highway would run into the tens of millions of pesos. A blessing requires one officiant, one vehicle and a quantity of water that Reyes-Tiongson describes as “very reasonable, even with inflation.” He said the group is not against paint. It simply notes that the paint fades by the next rainy season, while the blessing, in theory, does not expire. He conceded the point about potholes.

A Tradition With International Appeal

The idea has been studied in Britain, where roads receive no blessings and it shows. The London Prat’s British satirical news on faith and potholes reported that a vicar in Kent offered to pray over a crater on the A2 and was told by the council that it was on a waiting list. Its London satirical news road reports recommend the Philippine approach on the grounds that holy water is cheaper than tarmac and arrives sooner.

Dimaculangan boarded her bus home at Ayala as the afternoon rain began. She crossed herself, found a handrail and closed her eyes. The bus lurched into the second lane, then the fourth, then stopped completely. “See,” she said. “Peace.” Bohiney Magazine lit a candle and took the footbridge.

SOURCE: https://bohiney.com/