Our Lady of Luján

Our Lady of Lujan emerged from the colonial encounter between Portuguese-Brazilian Catholic devotion and the Argentine frontier. From a miraculous stop in 1630 through nearly four centuries of growing veneration, the devotion has become inseparable from the national identities of Argentina, Uruguay, and Paraguay, serving as patroness of all three nations since 1930.

In May 1630, a Portuguese estate owner named Antonio Farias de Saa awaited a delivery from Brazil. He had commissioned a friend to send a statue of the Virgin Mary for a chapel he planned to build in Santiago del Estero. The friend, knowing the uncertainty of such requests, sent two statues: one of the Madonna with Child, and one of the Immaculate Conception.

The caravan carrying the images stopped for the night at the ranch of Rosendo de Trigueros, near the Lujan River, some 60 kilometers west of what would become Buenos Aires. When the drivers tried to resume their journey the next morning, the oxen pulling the cart with the statues would not move. No amount of urging could persuade them. Loads were shifted, animals changed, everything attempted. The oxen refused.

Only when the crate containing the smaller statue, the Immaculate Conception, was removed did the animals consent to continue. The larger Madonna with Child proceeded to Santiago del Estero as intended. But the smaller Virgin stayed at the Lujan River, having chosen her location.

Among those who witnessed this was Manuel Costa de los Rios, known as Negro Manuel, an enslaved man who declared immediately that he would remain with the image. He spent the next forty years tending the hermitage that Rosendo built, dressing the statue, leading pilgrims in prayer, and maintaining vigil over the Virgin who had stopped the cart. According to tradition, she spoke to him, revealing the day of his death. He died on the predicted date and was buried at the foot of her altar, as she had promised. His cause for beatification is now active.