Esquipulas Basilica
The Basilica of Esquipulas or Cathedral Basilica of the Black Christ of Esquipulas (Spanish: Basílica de Esquipulas or Catedral Basílica del Cristo Negro de Esquipulas ) is a church in the city of Esquipulas , Guatemala , named after the statue of the Black Christ of Esquipulas that houses it. It is the largest Roman Catholic church in Central America and southern Mexico, and the only one in America with four bell towers. The pilgrimage church has the status of a cathedral , a minor basilica and a Catholic national shrine .
building
The three-aisled basilica was completed in 1758 and consecrated on January 4, 1959. The architect Felipe Jose de Porres designed the church in a restrained Baroque style for the steadily growing crowd of pilgrims. The church was built sixty meters long, thirty meters wide and eighteen meters high on a platform a hundred meters long and fifty wide. The façade, flanked by four side, fifty-meter-high bell towers, shows pairs of double columns with niches in between. In the center is the crossing tower with a dome decorated with stained glass. The pediment is accompanied by volutes and small ornamental obelisks , which can also be found on the towers ending in an octagon with a dome . The cornices, which are not at the same height, are unusual.
history
The church was founded by Pope Pius XII. in 1956 as the seat of the new territorial prelature of Santo Cristo de Esquipulas , whose first prelate was the Archbishop of Guatemala Mariano Rossell y Arellano. He wanted to have the cathedral looked after by a Benedictine monastery, to whose founding in 1959 three monks from the Abbey of St. Joseph , Louisiana, were sent; the Benedictine monastery of Esquipulas still fulfills the task today. In 1961 Pope John XXIII raised the church to the rank of minor basilica . Pope John Paul II visited the Church on February 6, 1996 during his second apostolic visit to Guatemala to celebrate the four hundredth anniversary of the veneration of the Black Christ .
Pilgrimage
The church is visited by around 4.5 million pilgrims annually, including 1.5 million in the days leading up to its patronage feast on January 15 and the celebrations on March 9, which marks the date of the arrival of the crucifix in the city in 1595 . The crucifix was originally presented in a chapel before it was brought to the local parish church at the end of the 17th century due to the increasing flow of pilgrims and then moved to the new church with the consecration.
Others
During a visit in 1840, anthropologist John Lloyd Stephens described the church as the “only object of interest” in town.
Web links
- Homepage of the basilica (span.)
Individual evidence
- ↑ Basílica del Cristo Negro de Esquipulas on gcatholic.org
Coordinates: 14 ° 33 '44 " N , 89 ° 21' 3.9" W.