Mexico City: Mexico's biggest religious pilgrimage to the Virgin Day of Guadalupe reopened on Monday without restrictions for the first time since the COVID-19 pandemic.

For two years, the multi-day pilgrimage was canceled or reduced due to the risk of contagion posed by the large number of devotees.

During the darkest days of the pandemic in 2020, the Mexico City basilica, where the image of the Virgin is kept, was closed for four days. It reopened in 2021, but pilgrims from across the country were not allowed to continue their tradition of sleeping outside.

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The basilica's courtyard was filled with tents and sleeping people for this year's ceremony on 12 December.

People sleep in the basilica to show their devotion – one of the highlights is the midnight Mass during which "Las manitas", the traditional birthday song to the Virgin, is sung – but also because many pilgrims are poor.

Hundreds of thousands of pilgrims walk, cycle, or take buses. The Mexico City government estimates that 11 million people visited the temple in the past few days this year.

"Thank God, we have regained normalcy," Mons said. Salvador Martínez, the rector of the basilica, in a statement invited people to visit "if possible, to avoid large crowds".

Such good intentions were impossible to achieve amid a human sea of believers. Ade Carbajal went to the basilica on Monday with her two children to thank the Virgin for protecting her family from the pandemic.

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"The period we went through with Covid was very difficult, so we wanted to thank them," Carbajal said. Nazario Bonilla, 23, made his eighth trip from the neighboring state of Morelos with a group of fellow motorcyclists.

"We always come to ask him for a little health so that we are not out of work," Bonilla explained. The basilica houses an image of the Virgin, which is said to have miraculously inscribed itself on the cloak of an indigenous farmer in 1531.

Pope Francis said at the Vatican on Monday that Mary appeared then "to accompany the American people on this difficult path of poverty, exploitation, and socioeconomic and cultural colonialism" and that she continues to be a mother to Latin Americans today have happened.

"She is in the middle of the caravan, heading north in search of freedom and well-being," he said, referring to the caravan of immigrants attempting to enter the United States.

Virgin Day is also celebrated with fireworks throughout Mexico. In one such incident, a police pickup truck carrying fireworks exploded in a town northeast of Mexico City, injuring a dozen people.

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The victims, including a child, suffered third-degree burns and fractures in the explosion late Sunday in the city of Nopaltepec, according to Mexico's health department.

Volunteer firefighters from the nearby city of San Martín de los Pyramides posted pictures of the charred, twisted wreckage of the pickup truck lying in the road.