Good Friday is special in Italy. More so in Sicily. And perhaps most so in Enna, a provincial capital perched high in the center of Sicily. My wife, Trish, and I waved goodbye to our eight traveling companions from the American Academy in Rome in Palermo on Thursday and, on Good Friday morning, hired a car for the two-hour drive.

Why Enna? Because we heard it was the biggest and the best, and they dress their little girls up as nuns, and who knows if we’ll ever be in Sicily on Good Friday again.

It began about 6 in the evening, and the entire town seemed to participate. Initially it seemed very much a pageant, with the congregants of each church wearing identifying colors and congregating at the Duomo. As the procession began, they raised their hoods, looking disturbingly like members of the Ku Klux Klan, but actually dressed as penitents, a tradition centuries old. Night began to fall, and the joviality gave way to respectful and reverent silence, as the procession, bearing the figures of Jesus and Mary preceded by bands composed almost entirely of brass instruments, threaded its way through the old town and to the cemetery for a benediction.