On Good Friday of 1810, Don Bernardo Abeyta was walking through El Potrero, about 24 miles north of Santa Fe, at the foot of the Sangre de Cristo Mountains, when he saw a strange beam of light coming out of the ground. He dug with his bare hands into the sand and retrieved a crucifix with a black-skinned Jesus.
Abeyta took the crucifix to the local parish priest, Father Alvarez, who put it on the altar of the church in Santa Cruz. But by the next day it had vanished. It was found again back at El Portrero! When the same thing happened two more times, it was decided that El Portrero must be holy ground, so a small chapel was build there to house the crucifix.
But Abeyta and Father Alvarez were not the first people to realize there was something special about the area. Long before the Spanish came to the region, the local Pueblo First Nation considered the local hot springs to be a sanctuary inhabited by healing spirits.
After the hot springs dried up, did the healing energy remain in the sand on which the chapel was built?
Today, that adobe chapel is known to the world as El Santuario de Chimayó. Each Good Friday, more than 2,000 believers congregate there, and 300,000 pilgrims come every year.
In a small room at the back of the chapel is a hole in the floor called “el pocito.” Visitors can scoop out some sand and take it home in vials, while others mix it with water to make mud that they put on their skin. Some even eat it.
The walls of this “Room of Miracles” are covered with letters of thanks from people who say their ailments were healed. There are even discarded canes, braces, and wheelchairs.
You Can Visit El Santuario de Chimayó This October
The “Lourdes of the Southwest” is one of the highlights of our upcoming “Journey to the Center of an Ancient World” tour October 20 – 24, 2022 hosted by Irina Grundler. Irina is a healing energy practioner who teaches Electromagnetic Field Balancing Technique® and Reconnective Healing.
If you join this small group tour, here are some of the highlights you will enjoy:
- Explore the massive buildings of the ancestral Pueblo peoples at Chaco Canyon
- Spend time at Pueblo Bonito, the most celebrated cultural site of the Canyon
- Tour ancient Acoma Pueblo
- See the petroglyphs of Una Vida
- Tour the lively city of Taos
- Visit the Pueblo Puye Cliff Dwellings
- Take a heritage walking tour of Santa Fe
Get Full Details of Our New Mexico Tour Here
Photo credits:
Chimayo by Sally Deluca, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons
Taos Pueblo by Karol M. under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license.