Shrines around the World: Our Lady of the Holy Rosary, Las Lajas, Colombia

Where’s that: The sanctuary of Our Lady of the Holy Rosary of Las Lajas is located in a canyon of the Guáitara river in Ipiales in southwestern Colombia, near the border with Ecuador.

Our Lady’s Connection: Apparitions to a deaf and nonverbal child and her mother in 1754.

The sanctuary of Las Lajas has a most spectacular setting: the beautiful basilica is built inside a canyon and is reached by crossing a 50m-high bridge across the gorge.

The basilica, built between 1916 and 1949, stands on the exact spot where in 1754 an indigenous woman named Maria Meneses de Quiñones and her deaf-nonverbal daughter Rosa took refuge from a violent storm. Suddenly Rosa spoke, exclaiming, “The Virgin is calling me,” as she pointed to a colourful illuminated silhouette on the rock. They kept the apparition secret, but returned to the spot daily to pray.

Soon after, Rosa died. Her mother immediately took the child’s body to the cave to pray for her child — and Rosa was brought back to life. After that, she reported the apparition.

Soon a second miracle took place, the healing of a blind man, and as people came to pray there, more miracles were reported at that spot.

A wooden church was built there within a couple of years of the reported apparition, and a bigger shrine in 1803. The current church was dedicated 1953, and declared a minor basilica in 1994.

Its focal point of devotion is a miraculous image of Our Lady, holding the Child Jesus. Tradition says that the very first pilgrims to the site of the reported apparition saw that image on the cave’s wall. It is mysteriously imprinted, and not painted, on the cave’s rock. Geologists have been unable to explain how the image was created.

The sanctuary celebrates its feast day on September 16. Photo: Diego Delso/Creative Commons

Published in the September 2024 issue of The Southern Cross magazine