Luján Shrine

A town born around its shrine

Luján is a city in Buenos Aires province, about 65 kilometres west of the federal capital, on the banks of the río Luján, in the humid pampa.^[6] Unlike most Argentine cities, it did not grow around a fort or a market, but around its shrine: the city owes its existence and its name to Marian devotion, to the point that it is commonly called the "capital of faith" of Argentines.^[7]

In the 17th century, the region belonged to the distant outskirts of Buenos Aires, a land of great estancias and oxcart tracks linking the coast to the country's interior.^[8] It is on one of these tracks, near a ford of the río Luján, that tradition places the founding event of the place.

Why a shrine here?

The shrine's origin lies in an event reported for May 1630: two small terracotta images, commissioned in Brazil by a landowner of Sumampa (Santiago del Estero), António Farías Saa, were travelling inland on an oxcart.^[9] At a halt near the río Luján, tradition says, the oxen stubbornly refused to move on until the crate containing the image of the Immaculate Conception was unloaded; this was taken as the sign that the Virgin wished to remain there.^[10]

According to the account handed down by Fr Jorge María Salvaire in his Historia de Nuestra Señora de Luján (Buenos Aires, 1885), the oxen refused to advance, and Heaven's will was only understood when the image of the Conception was set down on the ground, which the Queen of Heaven had chosen to remain in these lands.^[11]

The history of this image, of its Brazilian making and of the choice of the Immaculate Conception forms a story of its own; what matters here is that this halt of the oxcart founded a place. Around the statue set down there, a cult gradually organised, then a chapel, then a town. See the detailed article: Our Lady of Luján (1630).

The present shrine is the fourth building raised for the same image. To understand Luján is to follow this growth, from a pampa hut to a monumental basilica.^[12]

The first ermita and the Negro Manuel

The first shelter was a humble ermita of wattle and daub, near the place where the oxcart halted.^[13] The figure attached to this first shrine is that of an African slave known as Negro Manuel, given as guardian of the image, who watched over it, it is said, until his death.^[14] His memory remains inseparable from the place: the shrine's first servant was a black slave, a detail Argentine devotion has never forgotten.

Ana de Matos's chapel

Around the middle of the 17th century, a wealthy widow, Ana de Matos, had the image transferred to her lands, closer to the present site of the city, and raised a worthier chapel for it.^[15] It is around this second shrine that the nucleus of the future town of Luján took root, devotion gradually drawing population and trade. Pious tradition reports that the image, moved too far from the chosen spot, returned in inexplicable fashion, until its will to remain in the region was respected.^[16]

The church of Lezica y Torrezuri (1763)

The third building was a true solid church, financed by the wealthy merchant Juan de Lezica y Torrezuri and inaugurated on 8 December 1763, feast of the Immaculate Conception.^[17] It was in this colonial church that the first camarín was fitted out — the reliquary chamber behind the altar, where the image is exposed for veneration. This 18th-century shrine served for more than a century and a half, until it became too small for the crowds.

The neo-Gothic basilica (1887-1935)

The fourth and last church is today's great basilica, whose foundation stone was laid in 1887 and which was only completed in 1935.^[18] Its construction, spread over nearly fifty years, is the work of a whole century of Argentine popular fervour. The timeline below summarises the growth of the place.

The basilica of Luján is one of the vastest religious buildings in South America and one of the summits of Argentine neo-Gothic architecture. Its silhouette of a French cathedral, planted in the middle of the pampa, strikes by the contrast between Gothic verticality and the absolute horizontality of the plain.^[19]

A plan inspired by French cathedrals

The plans were drawn up by the French architect Uldéric Courtois — hispanised as Ulrico Courtois —, a former pupil of Eugène Viollet-le-Duc, the great restorer of the Gothic in the 19th century.^[20] He was assisted by engineers Alfonso Flamand and Rómulo Ayerza, then by other architects over the decades.^[21] The design is that of a cathedral Gothic: Latin-cross plan, long nave, projecting transept, flying buttresses and sculpted ornament, in the line of the great European neo-Gothic projects transposed to American soil.

The building measures about 104 metres in length, 68.5 metres in width at the transept and 42 metres at the façade.^[22] These dimensions made it, on completion, one of the largest churches on the continent.

The two 106-metre towers

The two 106-metre spire-towers, a landmark visible for kilometres across the plain, were only finished in 1935, a quarter of a century after the nave opened.^[23] They house a carillon of fifteen bells, whose weights range from about 55 kg to 3,400 kg for a total approaching twelve and a half tonnes of bronze.^[24] Their ringing, which carries far over the pampa, is part of the shrine's sonic identity.

Stone, marble, stained glass and organs

The main structure is of stone, whose foundation stone, cut from Tandil granite, measured 1.22 metres on each side.^[25] The interior gathers rich imported furnishings: fourteen Carrara marble statues, stained glass from Bordeaux and two organs by the Parisian house of Mutin-Cavaillé-Coll.^[26] This recourse to European workshops — local stone but Italian marbles, French windows, Parisian organs — is typical of the great Argentine projects of the late 19th century, where the aim was to offer the country's patroness a setting worthy of the cathedrals of the Old World.

The camarín of the Virgin

At the heart of the shrine lies the camarín, the reliquary chamber behind the high altar where the terracotta image, about 38 centimetres high, is exposed for veneration.^[27] The colonial original, built in the time of Lezica y Torrezuri, was entirely renovated in 1872-1873 by Fr Eusebio Fréret, who lined it with cedar wood and gilded ornaments.^[28] The small statue is dressed in a rich blue and white mantle — the colours of the Argentine flag — which makes it appear far larger than it is; this triangular garment has become the popular image of the Virgin of Luján.^[29]

Since the last third of the 19th century, the shrine has been entrusted to the Congregation of the Mission, the order founded by Saint Vincent de Paul, whose members are called in Argentina vicentinos or lazaristas.^[30] It is they who carried the project of the great basilica and who still ensure the service of the place today.

The arrival of the Lazarists in 1872

In 1872, the Archbishop of Buenos Aires, Bishop Federico Aneiros, entrusted the keeping of the church to the Fathers of the Congregation of the Mission.^[31] On 28 January 1872, Fr Eusebio Fréret arrived in Luján from the central house in Buenos Aires; he was joined a few months later, on 20 May, by a young missionary who would mark the shrine forever, Fr Jorge María Salvaire.^[32]

Fr Salvaire's vow

In 1874, Salvaire, gone on mission to the Ranquel Indians of the frontier, nearly met his death in a raid.^[33] He then made the vow, if he escaped with his life, to devote his life to raising in Luján a shrine worthy of the Virgin. Saved, he kept his word: he wrote the great documented history of the shrine, revived devotion, obtained the coronation of the image and launched the building of the basilica.^[34] He died in 1899, well before the completion of the work to which he had vowed his life.

The shrine's notice kept by the Congregation of the Mission presents the basilica of Luján as the work of the Marian faith of the Argentine people, due in great part to Fr Salvaire, in fulfilment of the vow he had made when the place was still only a pampa village.^[35]

The canonical coronation of 1887

The decisive moment in the recognition of the place was the canonical coronation of the image. On a petition presented by Fr Salvaire, Pope Leo XIII authorised the solemn coronation, which took place on 8 May 1887, and granted Our Lady of Luján an office and Mass of her own.^[36] The laying of the foundation stone of the new basilica took place the same year: Roman recognition and monumental building went hand in hand.

In the 20th century, the place received the highest ecclesial and civil distinctions, which consecrated its rank as foremost national shrine.

Minor basilica and national patroness (1930)

On 15 November 1930, Pope Pius XI raised the building to the rank of minor basilica, shortly after the solemn consecration of 6 October of the same year.^[37] The same year, Our Lady of Luján was proclaimed patroness of Argentina, Uruguay and Paraguay, consecrating the shrine's outreach over the whole southern cone of America.^[38]

National historic monument (1998)

The Argentine State in turn recognised the value of the place: the basilica was declared a National Historic Monument on 12 March 1998.^[39] The shrine now depends on the Archdiocese of Mercedes-Luján, erected in 1997, which holds pastoral responsibility for it.^[40]

John Paul II's visit (1982)

In June 1982, in the midst of the Falklands War, John Paul II came to Luján: he was the first pope to pray in person before the image.^[41] Kneeling before the Virgin, he laid at her feet a Golden Rose, the distinction popes have reserved since the Middle Ages for certain persons or for notable Marian shrines, which he had blessed on 11 June of that year.^[42] This gesture, performed in the heart of a painful conflict for Argentina, lastingly anchored Luján in the country's spiritual memory.

Even more than for its architecture, the shrine of Luján counts for the crowds it gathers. It is the terminus of Argentina's greatest movement of popular piety.

The first pilgrimages (1893)

The modern organised pilgrimage dates back to the late 19th century: a first great documented pilgrimage took place on 29 October 1893, gathering about 400 workers; by 1901, attendance already reached some 5,000 people.^[43] From then on, Luján became the converging point of countless diocesan, professional and national pilgrimages.

The youth pilgrimage on foot (since 1975)

The most spectacular phenomenon is the peregrinación juvenil a pie a Luján, the youth walk. The first took place on 25 October 1975, on the initiative of a Buenos Aires priest: about 30,000 young people walked the roughly 60 kilometres separating the Liniers district, in Buenos Aires, from the basilica — some fifteen hours on foot.^[44] Launched in a politically tense period, when every gathering, even religious, was watched, it quickly became the country's greatest demonstration of faith.^[45]

Every first weekend of October, this walk now gathers more than one to two million people, converging by night towards the illuminated towers of Luján.^[46] It is one of the world's greatest Catholic pilgrimages by number of walkers.

The shrine today

In all, the basilica draws each year several million visitors and pilgrims, making it Argentina's most frequented place of worship.^[47] A few practical reference points for locating the shrine:

More than a monument, Luján is a living place: a pampa shrine where, for nearly four centuries, an entire people has come to lay down its sorrows and hopes before a small terracotta image, beneath the two spires watching over the plain.

• Our Lady of Luján (1630) — the terracotta image, the founding legend and Argentine Marian devotion
• The Church in Latin America — the setting of Latin American popular Catholicism
• Marian apparitions since the 19th century — the overall panorama and canonical statuses
• Sanctuary of Our Lady of the Cape — another great national Marian shrine, in Quebec
• Akita Shrine — a shrine of an image, like Luján, but at the other end of the world
• Banneux Shrine — Our Lady of the Poor, a 20th-century Marian shrine