OUR LADY’S JOURNEY’S CHURCH

Another nice small red-brick Neo-Romanesque church just one block from the railways and within walking distance from Miserere Station.

Its four-tier layered tower bears a strong resemblance to St Mary’s in Almagro and so does much of the rest, like a darker scale model of Massa’s lovely church for it is located between two two-storey houses and the church is only bathed in the sunlight that comes through the small clerestory windows at daytime. Also distinctive is the fine white and pink marble pulpit on the south-east corner of the nave as opposed to ”pulpitless” St Mary’s. There is a colourful high-relief depicting Our Lady’s Journey below a flat pink and white marble baldachino-matching the pulpit-in the High Altar just above the similarly canopied tabernacle. The relief is flanked by two casts of St John, the Baptist and St Joseph.

In a clockwise direction from the north aisle, these are the images displayed: St Therese of Lisieux; a reproduction of the icon and St Anthony of Padua. Already in north transept is the Lady Chapel with a cast of Our Lady of Luján and a statuette of St Martin of Porres whereas the Chapel of the Sacred Heart is in the south transept. Christ in Agony, St Lucy and St Cajetan stand along the south aisle while in a small Lady Chapel in the south narthex is the Immaculate Conception between the Argentinian and Vatican flags.

The church’s dedication was inspired by the story behind Our Lady of Monte Allegro’s Church in Liguria, northern Italy. Said story-also depicted in the west portico’s tympanum-dates back from July 2nd 1557 when Our Lady herself appeared before Giovanni Chichizola di Canevale, a humble local peasant, to manifest her ”own motherly predilection for the people of Rapallo” thus leaving a precious Byzantine icon depicting the Assumption of the Virgin to make her will evident. The icon, a bright-coloured painting on a tiny wooden table, shows St Mary – with the Greek ”HP OY”on her-lying by the Holy Trinity and a small myriad of saints and angels. The miraculous characteristics of the apparition prompted the building of a new church on the hill to house the thaumaturgic icon which would soon become a pilgrimage centre .

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!