Put Our Lady up on top of that darn mountain!

Twenty years after the French landed on the beaches of Sidi Ferruch, west of Algiers, in 1830, a plague struck the Algerian town of Oran. A terrible cholera epidemic broke out in September 1849. In a little more than a month, it took nearly 2,000 victims out of a population estimated at less than 30,000 inhabitants. Nothing seemed to be able to stop the epidemic. "Cholera has struck our poor city like a vulture spreading out its black wings. It is almost impossible to leave one's home or to open one's window without hearing cries of agony," Pauline de Noirefontaine, a French woman living in the city during the tragedy, wrote in a letter.

The hospitals were overwhelmed, military doctors and nurses were sent from Paris, and the local population fled the scene and spread the disease to neighboring towns. Nothing could stop the deadly bacterium.

General Pélissier, in charge of the medical emergency response, admitted his powerlessness, and decided to turn to God and the Blessed Virgin. The man was no altar boy, as we can see in the way he instructed Father Suchet, vicar general, to organize things: "I am no priest, but let me tell you this: ORGANIZE PROCESSIONS! Put Our Lady up on top of that darn mountain! She’ll chuck the disease into the sea."

So, chanting hymns, the faithful gathered in the Navy district by the sea and set out to climb the slopes of Aidour, a buttress of Mount Murdjajo on which the Spaniards, who had long been present in the region, had built the fort of Santa Cruz in the 16th century. They brought a statue of Our Lady with them.

The intensified prayer had an immediate effect. Sheets of rain came pouring down on Oran, washing the streets, roofs and walls. The rush of water forced the putrid matter out of the sewers and pushed to the sea the foul liquid that had accumulated. The town was saved.

It is on account of this miraculous end of the crisis that the French in Algeria developed a special affection for Our Lady of Santa Cruz. They built her a chapel two years later, which was eventually transformed into a magnificent shrine overlooking the bay. In 1965, three years after Algeria’s independence, the bishop of Oran, Bishop Bertrand Lacaste, donated the statue of Our Lady to the "Pieds-Noirs"(1) who had resettled in the region of Nimes (southern France) and wanted to perpetuate this devotion.

(1) The Pieds-Noirs (Black Feet) are the people of French and other European origin who were born in Algeria during the period of French rule from 1830 to 1962, the vast majority of whom departed for mainland France as soon as Algeria gained independence.

Adapted from: France Catholique