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Our 2001 Costa Rica Vacation - Rio Pacuare |
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This church, called Las Ruinas (the ruins of Iglesia de la Parroquia), was demolished by earthquakes several times. They first tried to build it following a religious revelation where a young girl found a small stone statue of the Virgin holding the Christ child. She brought the statue home and put it in a box. The next day she found another statue in the exact same spot (the location of the ruins). When she took that statue home she found the first one gone. It happened again the next day and the villagers took that as a sign from God so they decided to build a church there. Following the third destruction of the church by earthquake they decided to leave the structure as it was and build an entirely new church down the street called the Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels. A huge religious event now takes place here each year. The town, Cartago, only has about 500,000 people but there were over 1.5 million people there last year during the holiday on August 2. |
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