BASILICA OF OUR LADY OF BUENOS AIRES
On September 9th 1893, Mrs Celina Bustamante de Beláustegui donated a large site in Caballito, Buenos Aires to the Mercedarians to build a school and a church. Fifty years before, the order had been deprived of their Basilica-Our Lady of Mercy-and monastery-St Raymond-in the City by a confiscatory decree issued by President Rivadavia which also forced them to dissolve the order and join the secular clergy or else emigrate to the provinces. Homeless and poverty-stricken, the friars moved to the then still rural area where they had to walk a considerable distance to attend daily religious services at the ”neighbouring” Church of the Good Shepherd some twenty blocks to the north.
In the meantime, Fr. Torres was attending the launch of the Order’s new constitution in the Vatican. While in Rome, he struck up a friendship with an elderly Italian friar who brought the Madonna de Bonaira from Cagliari, Sardinia into his attention. This advocation had been worshipped on the island since 1370 when a Spanish galleon was wrecked and a wooden trunk containing the precious image found on the shore. The statue- considered a good omen by the locals and instantly adopted as their Patroness- was attributed to an unknown Byzantine artist due to the Virgin’s wooden eyes and the visible tip of her left foot. The fact that it had been entirely gilded first and then painted all over has also been considered conclusive proof of its origin. Learning of the Sardinian Madonna- who happened to be the original Patroness of Buenos Aires, too- only prompted Fr Torres’s decision: this should be dedication given to the order’s future church.
No sooner had he arrived in Buenos Aires than a statue of Our Lady of Buenos Aires was commissioned to a Parisian firm by the name of Barelli to be blessed on 25th April 1897 and placed in the Basilica’s High Altar on 14th May, the Virgin’s feast. The first precarious chapel-which is now a classroom in the school next door-was designed by Fr. Angel Páez and built in 1894 . This would the predecessor of the a second one designed by Fr. Nicolás González three years later. The old campanile, with its two German bells, was built from designs by Fr Márquez, a key figure in the history of the basilica. By that time, Caballito had grown into a prosperous farming area chiefly inhabited by hard-working Italian families with young children in desperate need of a school which led to the chapel also doubling as an active community centre.
The leading spirit of the Basilica was no doubt Fr José Márquez who would walk the streets collecting for the building works until late in the evening for several years in spite of his poor health. The determined priest had envisaged a majestic basilica and therefore contacted Salesian Fr Ernesto Vespignani, who found inspiration in the Sacred Heart’s Church in Turin. After Vespignani’s death in 1926, another Salesian friar would take over the works of what he had labelled a ”Lombardic Gothic basilica”.
Vespignani had planned ”a succession of quadrilaterals in the shape of stars supported by huge pillars for the side aisles with an astounding series of arches”. Five side aisles with clerestory surround the circular sanctuary beneath the large dome crowned by a forty-five-metre-tall lantern. Fr Márquez had dreamt of a superb Walcker organ for the large organ gallery and even travelled to Germany to order one in 1930 but financial hardship eventually forced him to accept an old organ from Luján instead.
The nineteen-metre-tall German pink granite baldachino with bronze capitals and twelve Carrara angels on top, eight praying on their knees and four playing trumpets is the work of Quintino Piana. It was presented in 1926 along with the Italian marble High Altar decorated with gold Venetian mosaic evincing Cadenazzi’s talent. Behind Our Lady of Buenos Aires’ Shrine is now the image of Our Lady of Mercy worshipped by Manuel Belgrano whom he even proclaimed General of his Army and presented with his baton to celebrate his victory over the Spanish Army in the battle of Tucumán.
The font was sculpted to the very design of Fr Márquez himself who had thought of ”an angel that is all poetry (standing) among bouquets of lilies and rose coronets for the baptistery ; a laurel coronet is on its head and a smiling child at its feet”. The statue in Carrara marble was carried out accordingly. Another angel stands up on top of the cherub-ornamented holy water stoup in the narthex with a dove at its feet. Particularly charming are the statues of acolytes in the Mercedary habit for offerings spread all across the basilica.
Eleven Genoese bells for the two seventy-five-metre-tall belltowers-one of which contains the clock-arrived in 1928 just when the monumental portico gates by Piana & Gatuzzo portraying Spanish Conquerors-Juan de Garay included, quite surprisingly-were fitted. Crowned by stylised recessed spires with crosses on top, the eye-catching towers are splendidly decorated with pinnacle-surmounted canopied niches with statues of Mercedary saints and outwork with a quatrefoil design. The impressive eighty-metre-long and thirty-two-metre-wide basilica is made of reinforced concrete.
On 4th August 1918 the foundation stone for the column in the corner of Gaona Av. and Espinosa St was laid and blessed while on 24th of September the Catalonian marble image of Our Lady of Mercy on top was unveiled to commemorate the 700th anniversary of the Mercedary Order in the presence of a papal representative.
Fr. Márquez passed away on the 1st August 1962. God rest his soul!
