The Blessed Virgin wanted to stay near the source

About 2 million people took part in the Cartago Pilgrimage on August 2, 2019, in honor of the patron saint of Costa Rica, the Madonna of the Angels (Virgin of Los Angeles).

Many of them walked the 22 kilometers from San José to the shrine, and some did the last hundred yards on their knees. Pilgrims, called "romeros," come from all over Central America.

The origin of this pilgrimage goes back almost 400 years. In the morning of August 2, 1635, a native girl, Juana Pereira, went to gather wood as she did every day. She was walking near a spring when she was surprised to find a statuette of a woman with a child in her arms on the top of a rock. She brought the statue of the Virgin Mary home and put it in a trunk.

The next morning, Juana went out again to find wood. When she arrived at the spring, she saw the same statuette on the same rock! She brought it back home, thinking it was a different one, but was very surprised to find her trunk empty!

The same thing happened again the next two days. On the fourth day, Juana decided to bring the statue to the parish priest Fr. Alonso de Sandoval, who kept it inside the church. When he went to check on it the next day, the statue was gone. Juana found it the following day in the exact same spot near the spring.

All understood then that the statue was to stay there, in this place called La Puebla de los Pardos, today known as Los Ángeles de Cartago, where a church was built in her honor. In 1926, the image was crowned canonically under the name of Our Lady of the Angels.

Costa Rican Catholics express their gratitude, respect and devotion to the Virgen de los Ángeles by making a pilgrimage to the Basilica of Our Lady of the Angels in Cartago. This pilgrimage is known as the "Romería." Pilgrims often bring an object that represents what they are going to pray for and place it in the basilica museum.

In Costa Rica, people from all over the country go on a pilgrimage to Cartago. The spring where Juana used to walk barefoot almost 400 years ago is now a basin of holy water where pilgrims fill bottles of water in the shape of the Virgin Mary.

Jonathan Jiménez, July 2019

(Adapted from an article published in 2018)