Thousands of pilgrims marched across the Dominican Republic last month to honor Our Lady of High Grace, or Altagracia, in celebration of the 100th anniversary of the icon's coronation.
Each year since 1601, pilgrims from across the island have participated in a four-day long pilgrimage to reach the sanctuary that holds the icon.
FR. JOSÉ RAMÓN SANTANA
Dominican Embassy to the Holy See
They leave the tenth of August with a Eucharist and a blessing in the central park with paintings of Our Lady with with crucifixes and singing the Salve to our mother, and for they walk for four days giving thanks for the favors they have received, the promises that Our Lady has fulfilled and others go to make promises, and they create an ocean of people that ends with thousands of people at the sanctuary.
The icon is first recorded as hanging in a parish in 1502. Several stories of the icon's origins exist, but studies commissioned from the Dominican Bishops' Conference have confirmed that the Marian icon is the first of its kind to come from the Americas.
FR. JOSÉ RAMÓN SANTANA
Dominican Embassy to the Holy See
They reached the conclusion that the painting is native to the Dominican Republic, that it was painted in the Dominican Republic. It has a joyful face, joyful like Our Lady and also like all of us Dominicans are.
It is the first Marian dedication of the new world, that is from Hispaniola as the Dominican Republic was then known, the faith is radiated to the known world.
In honor of the anniversary of its coronation, Archbishop Edgar Peña Parra traveled to the Dominican Republic as Pope Francis' delegate to celebrate Mass before the thousands of pilgrims that traveled to the sanctuary of Our Lady of Altagracia in Higüey.
The next day, the substitute for the Vatican Secretariat of State presided over Mass before the some 30,000 gathered in the Olympic Stadium in Santo Domingo.
The image carries a special place in the hearts of Catholic and non-religious Dominicans alike, who have credited to her intercession the end of a yellow fever outbreak on the island, and the withdrawal of U.S. troops from the country in the early 20th century.
FR. JOSÉ RAMÓN SANTANA
Dominican Embassy to the Holy See
Some people say that in the Dominican Republic we are not all Catholic, but we are all believers of the altagracia, we are all devoted to Our Lady of Altagracia.
The image has been crowned twice, once during the pontificate of Pius XI in 1922, and again by Pope John Paul II himself when he visited the Caribbean nation in 1979.
JM
