Visiting El Santuario de Chimayó, the most popular pilgrimage site in America

I have always felt drawn to visit New Mexico ever since I read about its beautiful landscape and rich Catholic history in Willa Cather’s 1927 novel, Death Comes for the Archbishop. I finally made it to the The Land of Enchantment last year. This is more than a catchy phrase conjured up to attract tourists. What I learned from my pilgrimage is that there is a real truth behind it. It is a place in our own country touched by the hand of God with stories of many miracles. The Church has a little known but remarkable history in this region.

Santa Fe was established ten years before the Puritan pilgrims of Thanksgiving lore landed on Plymouth Rock in 1620. The city’s original name is still displayed on its seal and flag. It is much longer: “La Ville Real de la Santa Fé de San Francisco de Asís, The Royal Town of the Holy Faith of Saint Francis of Assisi.” It was named to honor the spiritual father of the Franciscan missionaries who brought Christianity north of the Rio Grande.

The most popular site of devotion and certainly for the curiosity of tourists, is “La Escalera Famosa, The Famous Staircase” piously believed to have been built by St. Joseph himself. The carpenter of Nazareth is said to have mystically appeared in the late eighteenth century to build the staircase in answer to the prayers of the Loretto Sisters who needed access to their chapel’s choir loft.

A short walk from this popular attraction is Misión de San Miguel, the oldest extent church in the United States. In Europe one is used to four hundred year old churches but not here in America, making San Miguel a unique treasure. It was built shortly after the Spanish settled Santa Fe in 1610.

The pilgrim can also visit the city’s cathedral and pray before the oldest representation of the Virgin Mary in the United States known as La Conquistadora. The small statue was brought to New Mexico in 1626 and given the title “The Conquistador” after Santa Fe was reclaimed by the Spanish 12 years after they were expelled during the Pueblo Revolt of 1680.

While visiting these shrines the local santafesinos were all welcoming and eager to strike up a conversation. As impressive as these sites were, I was told the holiest site in New Mexico was to be found at a remote sanctuary in the desert on the bank of the Santa Cruz River called El Santuario de Chimayó. The locals all insisted I must visit it before I returned home to New York.

I had never heard of Chimayó before. Few know of it outside of New Mexico. I was surprised to learn, however, that it is actually the most popular site of pilgrimage in the United States. When I visited, I was just one of hundreds of thousands that come each year.

Most come during “Semana Santa, Holy Week.” The presence of tens of thousands of pilgrims during these days are ubiquitous throughout northern New Mexico. They can be seen walking beside freeways, country roads and city streets. The people of New Mexico have great respect for this two centuries old devotion and are eager to offer their encouragement and support by providing the pilgrims with food and water.

The largest crowds converge on the Santuario during the predawn hours of Good Friday. As they make their way in the early spring, they can see an abundance of New Mexico’s state flower along the way. The white yuca blossoming in the desert is affectionally called the “lampara de Dios, lamp of God”—a lamp to light the pilgrim’s way. By sundown on Easter, as many as 60,000 will have passed through the doors of the adobe church that is a mere 60 feet long and 25 feet wide.

The goal of their journey is twofold. The first, is to pray before the crucifix of “Nuestro Señor de Esquipulas, Our Lord of Esquipulas” displayed on the church’s central reredos. The second lies past the altar where there is a door that leads to small low-ceilinged room that contains the famed “Pocito, Little Well” which is the source of the sanctuary’s healing dirt which is why El Santuario de Chimayó has come to be called the “Lourdes of America.”

The origins of the Santuario lie in the devotions of a lay penitential brotherhood of the early nineteenth century that probably evolved from the Franciscan Third Order. The desert north of Santa Fe was a remote colonial outpost of New Spain. Clergy visits were rare, so devout men banded together to preserve their Christian Faith and the unique traditions of the region that combined aspects of Spanish and indigenous culture. A brotherhood was formed called “Fraternidad Piadosa de Nuestro Padre Jesús Nazareno, the Pious Brotherhood of Our Father Jesus the Nazarene.” They came to be known as “Las Penitentes, the Penitents” because of their great veneration of the Lord’s Passion. They established “moradas, meeting houses” which still dot the landscape of the region today where they would teach the Faith, baptize babies, tend to the poor, and lead prayers at funerals. Las Penitentes would also lead feast day celebrations and especially devotional processions reenacting the Lord’s Passion on Good Friday, often flogging themselves with branches of long cacti. As the Church became gradually more established in the region, oversight was able to be given by the local bishop to curb some of their excesses.

A “hermano mayor, “eldest brother” of the local penitent fraternity in the district of Chimayó was named Don Bernardo Abeyta whose property lay in “El Potrero, the Pasture” one of the placitas (a small collection of houses) that make up the village of Chimayó.

The site was once inhabited by the Tewa Pueblo people, drawn to the area because of its fertile soil. They believed healing spirits came forth from the area’s hot springs. After the hot spring dried up, they believed the soil of the area contained the spirit’s healing properties. The Tewa named one of the hills overlooking the area Tsi-Mayoh, which is where the name Chimayó derives from.

Under the night sky of Good Friday in 1810, Abeyta was doing penance on his property when he noticed a bright light emerging from the ground nearby. Digging into the earth at the source of the light he found a six-foot wooden crucifix of Our Lord of Esquipulas.

This is the name of a large crucifix made in the late sixteenth century that is venerated in southeastern Guatemala known as the “Cristo Negro, Black Christ” for the dark complexion of the Crucified Lord. This shrine in Esquipulas, Guatemala, is located 2,500 miles away from Chimayó and has similar origins in that the pre-Hispanic indigenous Central Americans considered the site to contain miraculous healing earth. In both the shrines of Chimayó and Guatemala there can be seen the organically developed intermingling of Spanish-Catholic and indigenous cultures. The formal name of what is commonly referred to as El Santuario de Chimayó is actually El Santuario de Nuestro Señor de Esquipulas. Abeyta probably heard of the devotion in Guatemala through travelers along the trade routes in the region.

A procession of people amazed at Abeyta’s story brought the crucifix to Fray Álvarez at the church in Santa Cruz de la Cañada 8 miles away. The crucifix disappeared the next day and was discovered after a frantic search in the same hole in the ground where Abeyta discovered it in the placita of El Potrero back in Chimayó. The crucifix was returned to the church in Santa Cruz only to disappear and be found again in Chimayó. When this miracle occurred a third time, all finally realized that this is where the Lord of Esquipulas himself, desires his image to be venerated.

Abeyta began construction of a chapel on the site built of thick adobe walls and logs supporting a mud roof. He commissioned artists to paint a beautiful and brightly colored reredos that frames the revered crucifix.

Fray Álvarez of Santa Cruz wrote to the local diocese in Durango endorsing the building of the Santuario. His letter states: “I declare that the miraculous Image of the Lord of Esquipulas has been venerated for three years in the Shrine that is attached to [Bernardo Abeyta’s] home…this place is frequented by many people, and they come as pilgrims from twenty and even more leagues distance to offer up their devotions to the Sovereign Lord and to experience relief or healing of their suffering.”

At this same time, in addition to prayers before the Lord of Esquipulas, experiences of relief or healing were also attributed to the holy dirt found in the Pocito where Abeyta discovered the crucifix. The priest-friar no doubt in his letter desired to emphasize the “safer” devotion to the crucifix, rather than the holy dirt.

The Santuario remained in the Abeyta family until it was sold to the local Archdiocese of Santa Fe in 1929. The Holy Week pilgrimages grew in popularity following World War II. New Mexican soldiers captured by the Japanese and forced to make the Bataan Death March vowed to God that if they were able to return home, they would make the Good Friday pilgrimage to Chimayó. Large numbers of veterans fulfilled the vow in 1946.

The Santuario received its first permanently assigned priest in 1959. Fr. Casimiro Rocca from Spain was a member of the Sons of the Holy Family, a congregation which still serves the shrine today. Under Rocca’s leadership the Santuario has grown to be the most popular pilgrimage destination in America.

On the expanded grounds of the Santuario pilgrims can also visit another charming chapel built in honor of El Santo Niño de Atocha in 1856. It was built by a man named Severiano Medina in thanksgiving for his recovery from a severe illness. The chapel remained in the private ownership of the Medina family until 1992 before it too was turned over to the Archdiocese of Santa Fe.

Another highlight of the pilgrim’s visit are the local vendors who sell chile from heirloom seeds passed down from generation to generation. The locals harvest and then roast their chile in traditional hornos—outdoor adobe ovens. The Chimayó chile is unique with its distinct red color and toasted flavor making this most prized culinary item of the region almost as desired by visitors as the holy dirt.

A seminarian accompanied me on the pilgrimage to New Mexico and shortly after we returned home, he began volunteering at Catholic summer camp. A young man at the camp confided in him that he would soon be undergoing open-heart surgery and asked for his prayers. With the memory of our pilgrimage fresh on the seminarian’s mind, he told the young man the story of Chimayó and gave him a sample of some of the holy dirt he brought back with him. Later in the summer, we were both delighted to hear that the young man’s surgery was cancelled as his ailment subsided to a degree completely unexpected by the doctors. The young man had rubbed some of the holy dirt on his chest and prayed to the Lord of Esquipulas for healing.

Experiences like these and more are what draw pilgrims to the New Mexican desert making El Santuario de Chimayó the most popular site of pilgrimage in America.

Sources:

Brett Hendrickson, The Healing Power of the Santuario de Chimayó (New York: New York University Press, 2017), 1-2, 4, 7, 10-12, 41-54, 56, 75-6.

Marion Amber, Shrines and Wonders: The Pilgrim’s Guide to Santa Fe and Northern New Mexico (Phoenix: Amor Deus Publishing, 2016), 128-135, 138, 144, 154-8.