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Journal North: Home | Sports | Opinion | Obits | Entertainment
Wednesday, July 23, 2008
Missing Icon Located in El Paso Warehouse
By Polly Summar
Journal Staff Writer
"Finally!" exclaimed Deacon Anthony Trujillo on Tuesday afternoon, explaining that his parish's new 12-foot-tall bronze sculpture of Our Lady of Guadalupe had been found.
After a day and night of uncertainty, the $70,000, 4,000-pound statue that is likely to become a new Santa Fe landmark had been located in an El Paso warehouse.
"I don't know why we weren't able to find her before," Trujillo said, just minutes before he left with a small contingent from Our Lady of Guadalupe Catholic Church on a drive to the border to retrieve Nuestra Señora.
About 30 parishioners — along with the Rev. Tien-Tri Nguyen, the parish pastor, and Monsignor Jerome Martinez y Martinez, rector at the Cathedral Basilica of St. Francis — traveled to Mexico City about two weeks ago to greet the statue at the foundry where it was being finished.
They then accompanied it by bus through Mexico, stopping at Zacatecas, Durango, Parral and Chihuahua for a Mass in each town. La Virgen made it to the border by last weekend but paperwork and security X-rays prolonged the statue's crossing into the U.S.
Church officials still expected the statue to be on its way to Santa Fe for a 5:15 p.m. Mass on Monday at the Cathedral. The statue was supposed to be on a flatbed truck in front of the Cathedral so that Santa Feans could pay homage to her, just as crowds did during the stops in Mexico.
But Monday evening arrived with no sign of the statue anywhere in New Mexico. Not even the State Police could find her. Trujillo was making calls trying to find the statue; a parishioner's report that it had been tracked down late Monday night turned out to be in error.
"It was awful," said Dolores Romero, business manager for the parish who also went on the trip to Mexico. "I've had an upset stomach the whole time."
The stories the parish was being told by various contacts in El Paso kept changing. A report that the huge likeness of Mexico's patron saint had been turned over to FedEx but with a bogus tracking number turned out to be wrong.
In any case, with the statue finally located at the border warehouse Tuesday, parish leaders took matters into their own hands. Trujillo, Nguyen and parishioners Richard Gorman, Jose Luis Porrole and Flip Sandoval left shortly after 2:30 p.m. in a truck with a trailer certified to carry 14,000 pounds.
"Our Lady only weighs 4,000 pounds, so we should be OK," Trujillo said.
The group planned to stay in a hotel Tuesday night and be at the warehouse at 9 a.m. today to load the statue and head back to Santa Fe.
A stop at St. Thomas Aquinas Church in Albuquerque is tentatively planned, as well as a stop in Bernalillo, near McDonald's.
"People are welcome to meet us there," Trujillo said, and caravan with the truck to Santa Fe. The current plan is for the statue to go directly to the Guadalupe church Downtown for a Mass at either 5 or 6 p.m. Those interested should call the church for an exact time.
The parish commissioned the sculpture two years ago from Mexican artist Georgina "Gogy" Farias. It will be placed outside the wall of the historic Santuario de Guadalupe facing northeast toward Downtown Santa Fe.
Nguyen has developed a reputation as a community builder since coming to the parish five years ago and believes that having the statue facing the town will welcome the community to the parish and the Santuario de Guadalupe.
The santuario — a 230-year-old shrine to Nuestra Seš®±” — has been back in the parish's control since 2006, when a long-term lease under which the Guadalupe Historic Foundation had operated the historic church building for performances and art exhibits expired.
Already, parishioners say, the statue has forged new bonds.
"Everywhere we went (in Mexico), people were thanking us for bringing her to their towns," parishioner Gilbert Pino said.
Trujillo said at every stop, locals would come carrying roses, religious artifacts and money that they would put in the folds of Our Lady's mantilla. "We would leave the money with local churches," he said.
"But we collected all the roses," Trujillo said. "We're going to put those petals all around her when she's on the truck in front of the church."
Romero recalled that in Chihuahua, "We were in a very humble church in a very poor neighborhood. Within minutes, there were 50 to 75 people around her. They all wanted to lay their hands on her. They'd say, 'Let me run and get my family,' and the word spread like that."
In Durango, about a dozen nuns walked past the statue without at first realizing what it was.
"Then one turned; then all of them turned," Pino said. "It was like a magnet. People would rub her and then rub themselves."
"She really is the virgin of the Americas," Romero said.
MEET LA VIRGEN