Wiktionary
n. (plural of penitente English)
Wikipedia
Los Hermanos de la Fraternidad Piadosa de Nuestro Padre Jesús Nazareno ( Spanish: 'The Brothers of the Pious Fraternity of Our Father Jesus the Nazarene'), also known as Los Penitentes, Los Hermanos, the Brotherhood of our Father Jesus of Nazareth and the Penitente Brotherhood) is a lay confraternity of Spanish-American Roman Catholic men active in Northern and Central New Mexico and southern Colorado. They maintain religious meeting buildings, which are not formal churches, called .
Usage examples of "penitentes".
So one of the most compelling cries that could be uttered in the police station was: “The goddamned Penitentes are out again!
On that hill to the west the good men of Centennial had once beat up the Chicano Penitentes for their weird practices, and the other day a crowd of young fellows from the town had thumped the Jesus Freaks for behaving differently from decent Methodists or Baptists.
The Penitentes were a sort of outlaw branch of the Catholics who took everything very seriously, especially Good Friday.
Antiquarian punks with museum-quality mohawks and chrome-studded minor body parts mingled with every variety of hopeful religious fanatic, from New Mexican penitentes to orange-bedsheet-clad Hare Krishnas.