Today is the Feast of Our Lady of Aperecida, a public holiday in Brazil. Known as ‘Nossa Senhora de Aparecida’, it honors Brazil’s patron saint, the Virgin Mary Aparecida. Mary is honored with a ten-day festival in the city near São Paulo that bears her name.
Legend has it that in October 1717, after a day’s fishing without any luck, fishermen cast their nets into the Paraiba River and pulled up a small brown statue of the Virgin Mary. Then they cast their nets again and this time they came up full of fish. This was the first miracle attributed to the statue.
The area where the miracle happened grew into a city called Aparecida (meaning “she who has appeared”) and a church was built to house the statue which has now become the destination of many pilgrimages. The statue is made of clay and is about 40cm in height. The statue was a lighter shade of brown when found, but is now much darker due to years of exposure to candles and lamps around the altar.
Because of its color and because the miracle happened to a young slave boy, devotion to the statue grew rapidly, particularly among Afro-Brazilians. Our Lady of Aparecida was declared the patron saint of Brazil by Pope Pius XI in 1929. The feast day of Our Lady of Aparecida has been a National Holiday in Brazil since 1980.
Bada BING!!!
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Fox News is news in the same way that cow pies are pies.
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Today is the birthday, in 1935, of Luciano Pavarotti, one of the most acclaimed operatic tenors of all time, (1990 UK No.2 single ‘Nessun Dorma’, 1990 UK No.1 album ‘The Essential Pavorotti’, spent 72 weeks on the UK chart). He died on 6 September 2007 of pancreatic cancer. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cWc7vYjgnTs
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