La Basílica de Nuestra Señora de los Ángeles

Just thought I'd share a little bit of culture with you. Read it! It's interesting.

Last week some of us went to Cartago, the original capital city of Costa Rica. Now it's most famous for the Catholic church. Besides it being one of the most beautiful I've ever seen, this church is also extremely famous for its influential history as well as its cultural importance today.

Legend has it that on August 2, 1635, a little girl found a black doll buried in the woods. So of course she takes it home with her. But when she wakes up in the morning, the doll has mysteriously disappeared. The girl discovers that the little doll had made its way back to the very same spot in the woods where she had uncovered it earlier. This goes on a couple more times before the little girl decides to bring the black statue to a priest. Believing it has magical powers, he decides to lock the doll up in order to keep it from escaping. But once again, the doll returned to its original home.

They marked this doll as the Virgin Mary. It was named "La Negrita," or the Little Black One. The importance of it being black was to express the importance of diversity and equality in Costa Rica. The Virgin Mary did not have to be European or white.

And because the church at the time was continuously being destroyed by earthquakes, the people of Cartago took it as a sign from the Virgin Mary and built a new church around this holy doll, exactly where she was found.

La Basílica de Nuestra Señora de los Ángeles (The Basilica of Our Lady of the Angels) is the holiest of churches in Costa Rica. To this day, the little statue is still believed to have extraordinary healing powers. And so every year, on August 2nd, people from all over Costa Rica (even Panama and Nicaragua) WALK to Cartago to celebrate the miraculous discovery.

Cartago prepares for 2 million people. That is half of Costa Rica's population! For some it may take hours to get there. And for others, their journey begins days in advance so they can make it to Cartago by August 2nd. (On foot!) Once people start to arrive, they crawl on their knees (no break yet) down the aisle repenting sins and making promises to La Negrita if their prayers are answered. We got to see a little bit of this in action when we went. Just a typical day at church, crawling on their knees.

This was something so different for me, so foreign. And it was incredibly moving.