UPCOMING EVENTS

In 1562, Painter Alonso de Narváez was commissioned to paint a portrait of the Virgin Mary.  When completed, it measured 44 inches tall and 26 inches wide. He took advantage of the wide space by adding St. Anthony of Padua (in honor of Antonio de Santana) to the left of Mary, holding baby Jesus, and St. Andrew (in honor of Andrés Jadraque) to her right.

By 1574, as the Dominicans moved around and Andrés was reassigned, the painting was eventually left in a chapel, where it sustained damage from a leaky roof. Two years later, a man named Juan Alemán de Leguizamón found the painting in such poor condition that his wife used it in the kitchen to dry wheat. When she died, the painting was lost until 1585.

María Ramos arrived in the Tunja area of Colombia before eventually staying in Catalina de Irlos, in Chiquinquira, where she discovered the badly damaged, partially destroyed painting. Ramos brought it to a chapel at which she frequently prayed.

On December 25, 1586, as Ramos was about to leave the chapel, a 5-year-old indigenous boy named Miguel saw the painting shining brightly on the ground where Ramos had been praying. The dilapidated painting, which previously hung in the chapel, was completely restored with beautiful, radiant color.

In 1829, Pope Pius VII declared Our Lady of Chiquinquira the patroness of Colombia.

The feast day is on November 19 and the most important Marian devotion in Puerto Rico. For this reason, Pope Saint Paul VI declared Our Lady of Divine Providence as "Principal Patroness of the Puerto Rican Nation" on November 19, 1969. The Pope expressed his deepest intention: to unite around the Mother of God the two great affections of Puerto Ricans - the love for their land and the love for the Mother of God. The image of Our Lady of Providence shows the Virgin Mary sitting with the baby Jesus sleeping on her lap, while she holds the left hand of little Jesus in her palms, in a prayer position.

The feast day of the Patroness of the Americas is on December 12. This celebration commemorates the appearance of Mary to the Mexican peasant Juan Diego in 1531. With bowed head, brown skin, and wearing a blue-green robe studded with stars, Our Lady of Guadalupe is one of the most iconic images and deeply connected to the identity of indigenous people in Mexico and beyond. The site of this Marian apparition is the most visited Catholic pilgrimage site in the world, and the third most visited sacred site across all religions. Around 10 million people visit the Shrine of Our Lady of Guadalupe each year.

The feast day is on January 21. About 800,000 pilgrims pass through the Basílica Catedral Nuestra Señora de la Altagracia every year.  For over 500 years, Our Lady of Altagracia has been interceding with her Son Jesus to intervene in our daily lives. A mass was celebrated on January 21, 1692, to thank Altagracia for protecting the volunteers who participated in the fierce and bloody battle of "La Limonade”. They all returned home safely without a scratch.  Since then, the feast of Our Lady of Altagracia has been celebrated on the anniversary of this miracle. 

The feast day is on February 2 in memory of the Presentation of the Child Jesus in the Temple of Jerusalem (Lk 2; 22-39) and the purification of the Virgin Mary after childbirth. Christ the Light of the world presented by his Mother in the Temple comes to illuminate everyone like the candle or candles, from which the invocation of the Virgin of the "Candelaria" is derived. Our Lady of Candelaria is celebrated throughout Latin America with many festivals. In Puno, in southern Peru, the Candelaria Festival is one of the most important in the region. UNESCO declared the Festival of the Virgin of Candelaria in Puno as Intangible Heritage of Humanity.

During the Salvadoran Civil War, people disappeared; peasants were terrorized; priests and church workers who attempted to aid the poor were tortured or killed. The quiet Archbishop found a voice. He denounced the right-wing government and the left-wing guerillas. He denounced even the government of the United States for supplying the weapons by which his people were killed. His homilies, which gave a weekly list of disappearances, tortures and killings, had a larger audience than any other radio program in the country.

This was a difficult hour, and as the Archbishop said, “A Christian’s authenticity is shown in difficult hours…. Blessed be God for this difficult hour in our archdiocese. Let us be worthy of it!”

The Archbishop was painfully aware that the soldiers torturing and killing his people were mostly baptized Christians. He was their shepherd, too, and so he could speak to them with the authority of the Lord. On March 23, 1980, he gave a radio sermon in which he appealed directly to them: “No soldier is obliged to obey an order contrary to the law of God…. It is time now for you to recover your conscience…. Therefore, in the name of God, and in the name of this long-suffering people, whose cries rise to heaven more loudly each day, I beseech you, I beg you, I command you! In the name of God: stop the repression!”

He must have known that he could not speak those words and live.

The Archbishop spent March 24 at a priests’ retreat. At a Mass he celebrated that evening, he preached a homily, saying, “Those who surrender to the service of the poor through love of Christ, will live like the grain of wheat that dies…”. After the homily, he approached the altar. A gunman entered the church and fired.

Oscar Romero became that grain of wheat, offering his blood for the “redemption and resurrection” of his people. In 2018, wearing the bloodstained belt that Romero had on at his last Mass, Pope Francis declared this martyred bishop a saint.

The feast day is on May 8 in honor of the patroness of all the regions of La Plata: Paraguay, Uruguay, and Argentina. The Basílica de Nuestra Señora de Luján is the most important Marian shrine in Argentina and is visited by many faithful every year. Our Lady of Lujan is also recognized for her significance in the history and culture of Argentina, particularly for her association with the country's national flag. The flag of free Argentina was designed by Sargent Major Carlos Belgrano to reflect the “blue and white of the Immaculata of Luján.”