Origins, tradition and Christian Faith
Who wants to relive an experience of faith and attend moments of great folklore, can participate in the feast of Jesus Nazareno, which takes place every year in San Giovanni Gemini the second Sunday of June, where the devotion of the Sangiovannese and Cammaratese communities is expressed gestures of particular religious significance (procession of votive candles) and symbols of great folklore value (Triumphal Chariot).
The festival has very ancient origins having been celebrated for the first time in 1677, as some documents testify.
It was the archpriest Francesco Giambruno, first archpriest of San Giovanni Gemini, who commissioned in 1649 the statue of the SS. Passionate crucifix named after Jesus of Nazareth, and he himself was licensed by the Bishop of Agrigento to bless it. This Crucifix aroused such great faith and such a feeling in the Sangiovannese that it was solemnly celebrated and carried in procession through the village.
From the middle of the nineteenth century onwards the party was enriched with the Triumphal Chariot.
The popular tradition says that the statue was found by some peasants near the mountain Puzzilo, today Pozzo di Gesù Nazareno, and from there the statue was brought to the village on a cart pulled by oxen that stopped in the square and then the statue came placed in the Mother Church, first in the transept and then, in 1758, in the main altar embellished later by a chapel adorned with precious marbles with the offers of the emigrants in America.