2 million?

Translated from a news report I saw on tv recently:

"Only 22 days from (August 2) the procession to Cartago, ecclesiastical authorities and aid organizations are preparing themselves for the 2 million parishoners that will come to see the altar of the Virgin of Los Angeles this year." (The report was only about a minute long and it doesn't have that much else that is interesting to say so I won't translate the rest of it, but you can read it in Spanish here.)

2 million. That's more than twice as large as any group of people that I've ever been in, and I thought those were pretty big. Since she is the patron saint of Costa Rica, the Virgin of Los Angeles, commonly called La Negrita (the little black girl), is really important to Ticos. Additionally, people travel from all over Central America to see her because she also supposedly heals people of all kinds of illnesses and injuries.

I previously posted some pictures of the church where the Virgin lives here.

If you want to learn how she became so highly revered, read on.



Around 1635, there was a segregated community in Cartago where only Mestizos lived. On the morning of August 2, a poor and simple woman from the woods nearby this community went out to collect firewood from the forest where she lived and she found on a rock a small figure that looked like the Virgin Mary holding the baby Jesus in her arms. The woman carved the figure out of the stone, took it home, and stowed it in a small wooden box.

As midday arrived, the woman went back into the forest to fetch more wood, and saw the same figure once again on the same rock. The woman believed that it was a different figure and so she again took it home to her house. When she opened the wooden box to put the second figure inside with the first, she was astounded to find that the first one was gone. Her astonishment grew to the extent that she was almost horrified when, for the third time, returning to the forest, she found the same figure on top of the rock. Without hesitation she took it home with her to see if it really did escape from the box again, and she found the box empty.

The good and humble woman was very alarmed and ran to the house of the priest in town where she recounted to him the strange series of events that she had just experienced. The priest, who is said to have been Father Alonso Sandoval, took the small figure and put it in a chest for further examination. When the priest decided to examine the figure the following day, he realized that it was no longer in the place where he had put it. When the poor woman who had previously discovered the figure returned to the forest to get her firewood the next morning, she discovered the figure once again on top of the same rock where she had found it each of the previous times.

When the woman ran to tell the priest, he and other people from the town came to the woods, and in a solemn procession carried the figure to the church, putting it in the tabernacle. The following day, when someone asked to examine the figure, it was no longer there and everyone ran to the same rock in the woods, and there it was once again. It was the fifth time that the figure had manifest itself as the Virgin Mary. Understanding that she wanted to live on that same spot, the people immediately built a hermitage there where she could live while they built an honorable temple to her, the heavenly Virgin of Los Angeles.

If you're interested, I translated the legend from this version.