Dog owners bring their pets to be healed by St Lazarus at this festival in Nicaragua

At an annual festival in Nicaragua, believers ask Saint Lazarus for the wellbeing of their dogs and bring them dressed in costumes to attend a mass in honour of the saint.

Forget the vet – worshippers in Nicaragua appealed to a higher power to cure their beloved canine friends on Sunday, during an annual festival in honour of Saint Lazarus.

Dressed up as angels, sports players, sailors and princesses, dogs in the western city of Mayasa joined their owners for a colourful celebration recognising the patron saint of beggars and the sick. “I have come to pay tribute to Saint Lazarus to save my dog,” said Rosa Blas, 18, holding her German Shepherd, Osa, in her arms. Osa had a fever and could not walk.

The pets filed down the streets toward the Church of Mary Magdalene – among them Covu, an enormous pit bull in a Barcelona football shirt who settled near the church’s pulpit. “He had an allergy ... I asked Saint Lazarus for a miracle and now he is healthy,” his owner Giovanni Gonzalez said.

A dog pulls a cart with beverages during the mass.

And it’s not just pets Saint Lazarus will cure – Nicaraguans ask for help with their own problems, too. “He cured my acne,” said lawyer Daneysi Palacios.

A man carries his dogs during the mass.

With the celebrations, Nicaraguans remember the parable of the rich man and Lazarus, a poor man covered in sores who longed to eat scraps from the rich man’s table, as dogs licked his wounds. However, when the two men died, it was Lazarus who went to heaven, while the rich man went to hell for clinging to material things during his life. “Jesus is always by the side of those who suffer, the poor, the beggar,” Father Pedro Mendez explained during his sermon.

A woman with her dog all dressed up for the mass.

Locals have been putting their faith in the healing powers of Saint Lazarus since the 19th century, when a deadly cholera epidemic struck Nicaragua.

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