Published on Friday, August 2, 2024

By the A.M. Costa Rica staff

Costa Ricans celebrate Patron Saint Virgen De Los Angeles (Virgen of Los Angeles), also known as La Negrita, on the 2nd of August every year.

Today is a public holiday in Costa Rica, and millions of devoted Costa Ricans and people from all over the world are visiting the Our Lady of the Angels Basilica, or  La Negrita Church.

Catholic authorities expect that more than two million pilgrims will journey to the church in Cartago Province on Friday.

According to documents from Costa Rica's National Library, the Marian festival began around 1635.

The folk tradition originates from Juana Pereira, a young girl from Cartago Province, who discovered a miniature stone doll on a big rock beside a spring of crystalline water while gathering wood in the forest. The girl brought the doll home.

When the girl went out the next morning to look for more wood, she was surprised to find an identical stone figure she had found the day before.


She happily brought the new figurine home, mistaking it for another doll. When she arrived, she discovered that the first doll was missing.


The next day, the same thing happened: the same doll on the same stone, and the doll at home had vanished.


The unexpected incident scared her. She decided to rush home and tell her mother what was going on. Her mother rushed her to the town priest's residence, Father Alonso Sandoval, to give him the doll and explain what had happened.

Father Sandoval took the doll, placed it in a box, and overlooked the situation. The next day, when he went to get the small stone doll, it was no longer in the box.


That next morning, Juana returned to the same woodland to collect additional firewood as usual and discovered the same stone doll, exactly on the same big rock. The girl and her mother returned to Sandoval's home to report about the situation. He was convinced that whatever was happening was a message from the Virgin Mary, the mother of Jesus.


Sandoval and some other villagers agreed to take the small stone doll to the local church and safeguard it in the Tabernacle box that houses the Eucharist.


The doll was missing the next day when he opened the box.


Sandoval resolved that the little stone doll, which seemed like a mother carrying a baby, was a message from God and the Virgin Mary herself. He requested to build a chapel in the same place where the doll was discovered the first time.





People refer to the black doll stone as La Negrita, yet it is said to represent the image of the Virgin of Los Angeles. The artwork depicts a spherical face with slanted eyes, a nose, and a little mouth. She carries an infant (Jesus) in her left arm, with his right hand outstretched in a blessing gesture.


The figure was named the Virgin of Los Angeles since the Franciscan Order's patron saint, Santa María de Los Ángeles, was celebrated on August 2, the day it was found for the first time.


The Virgin of the Angels was named Costa Rica's official patroness on September 24, 1824, by a proclamation issued by the country's top governmental authority at the time.


The figure was crowned in 1926, and Pope Pius XI named it the Queen of the Basilica of the Angels.

----------------
Have you visited La Negrita Church? We would like to know your thoughts on this story. Send your comments to news@amcostarica.com