Our Lady of Coromoto: Patroness of Venezuela

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SSA052: A proud 17th-century chief threatened to shoot an arrow at the Virgin Mary. That alone sets Our Lady of Coromoto apart from every other Marian apparition.

In 1652, the Virgin appeared to Chief Coromoto and his wife near Guanare, Venezuela, asking them to seek baptism from the Spanish settlers. The chief resisted. When Mary appeared a second time inside his hut, he reached for his bow. She vanished, and in his clenched fist he found a tiny image: 2.4 by 1.9 centimeters, luminous and impossibly detailed for something smaller than a fingertip.

Kathryn Laffrey and Alix Murray tell the full story, from the first apparition at the river to the chief’s deathbed baptism after a poisonous snakebite. They also follow the image through three centuries to its 2009 scientific examination, which confirmed it as acheiropoieta (not made by human hands). Researchers found human-looking eyes with tear ducts, an iris, and figures visible in the pupils. Lines finer than the fibers beneath them. And an indigenous feather crown that centuries of European artists had misread as a throne.

The episode looks at what makes Coromoto distinct among New World apparitions: Mary appeared in a mixed indigenous/Spanish form, speaking the Caquetío language, to a husband and wife together. The image she left behind reflects the people who received it.

The conversation also covers the two basilicas in Guanare: the 1710 Spanish Baroque original, still beautiful after three centuries, and the brutalist National Shrine completed in 1996, whose concrete is already crumbling. Plus the September feast days with indigenous dances and processions; Kathryn’s chalice pall embroidered after the miraculous image; and the World Apostolate of Our Lady of Coromoto, now carrying her image to every continent.

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