Virgen de los Angeles Day is a Costa Rican holiday celebrating Costa Rica's patron saint, the Virgen de los Angeles, also known as La Negrita.
According to tradition, La Negrita, the Black Virgin, is a small (less than a meter tall), probably indigenous, representation of the Virgin Mary found on this spot on August 2, 1635 by a native woman. As the story goes, when she tried to take the statuette with her, it miraculously reappeared twice back where she’d found it. The townspeople then built a shrine around her.
In 1824, the Virgin was declared Costa Rica’s patron saint. La Negrita now resides on a gold, jewel-studded platform at the main altar in the Nuestra Señora de los Angeles Basilica in Cartago. Each August 2, on the anniversary of the statuette’s miraculous discovery, pilgrims from every corner of the country (and beyond) walk the 22km from San José to the basilica. Many of the penitent complete the last few hundred meters of the pilgrimage on their knees. This basilica is equally visited by tourists and locals.
Famous quotes containing the words los angeles, los and/or angeles:
“Los Angeles is a Yukon for crime-story writers.”
—Christina Stead (1902–1983)
“Of Eva first, that for hir wikkednesse
Was al mankinde brought to wrecchednesse,
For which that Jesu Crist himself was slain
That boughte us with his herte blood again—
Lo, heer expres of wommen may ye finde
That womman was the los of al mankinde.”
—Geoffrey Chaucer (1340?–1400)
“In Washington, the first thing people tell you is what their job is. In Los Angeles you learn their star sign. In Houston you’re told how rich they are. And in New York they tell you what their rent is.”
—Simon Hoggart (b. 1946)