Pope Leo XIV visited the Cathedral of Notre-Dame in Paris last month for vespers. As he was guided through the cathedral, he came upon an image of the crucified Christ. “Wow,” he seemed to say, before pausing and gazing at the image for a few moments, perhaps in prayer or reflection.
The image he saw is known throughout Peru as El Señor de los Milagros (Our Lord of the Miracles). According to tradition,the image was painted on a wall in Lima by an enslaved man from Angola sometime in the early 1650s.
In 1655, an earthquake leveled the neighborhood, leaving little but the mural standing, sparking a devotion. Authorities, it is said, tried painting or erasing the image three times but were mysteriously unable to do so. In 1687 and 1746, earthquakes again rocked the neighborhood, but the wall remained miraculously standing. The devotion grew, and today El Señor de los Milagros is celebrated by Peruvians across the world.
‘We all need a miracle’
Imelda Richárd, the coordinator for prison ministry in the Archdiocese of Atlanta, takes part in a local celebration at the Mission of Our Lady of the Americas in Lilburn, Ga. The procession through the neighborhood follows a morning Mass, and the Peruvian consul participates and helps carry the image. Those who carry the image, which is mounted on a large anda, or float, wear habits that are purple or violet, a color used during times of penance in Catholic liturgies.
“When you go to that procession, at least I try to look at everything happening around me, and it’s very moving to see how people get involved, and that it’s not something they take for granted,” Ms. Richárd said.
“I think that we all, at some point in our lives, need a milagro; we all need a miracle,” she said. “We all need to believe that that miracle is going to happen. And it seems to me that El Señor de los Milagros delivers.”
At a museum attached to the church in Lima, she once saw a wall covered in small metal charms, called milagros, left by people whose prayers were answered. She saw milagros representing “a lung, a kidney, a baby.”
Because of its prevalence in Peru, Pope Leo likely came to know the devotion in 1985, if not before. That year, as a young Augustinian priest, he was assigned to a mission in Chulucanas, a town in northern Peru. Each October, known there as el mes morado (the purple month), processions with replicas of the mural are carried down the streets of Lima and throughout towns in Peru.
In Lima, hundreds of thousands of pilgrims take part in venerating the image, alongside an image of Our Lady of the Cloud. The two images are carried back-to-back.
Ms. Richárd’s maternal grandmother inspired her devotion to El Señor de los Milagros as a child in Peru, though she drifted away from the devotion for a time as a young adult. She recalled her grandmother wearing the purple habit the entire month and regrets not attending the procession with her at the time.
Ms. Richárd goes to Peru every year and visits the church where the original image of El Señor de los Milagros is kept, the Monastery of Las Nazarenas. As the coordinator of prison ministry, Ms. Richárd promotes devotion to El Señor de los Milagros among incarcerated people, sharing novenas and prayer cards she brings from Peru.
Before her trips, Ms. Richárd tells the men she visits in prison that “they’re welcome to pass their intentions onto my heart, and I will present them to El Señor de los Milagros.”
“So my visit to El Señor de los Milagros is not only personal. I also carry all these men’s intentions in my heart, and I put them at his feet, and I trust that he will deliver what these men are asking of him,” she said.
“I don’t doubt that he hears my prayers [elsewhere], but it’s the physical representation where I can go and put my prayers at his feet and have faith that he’s listening to my prayers and he will answer them,” Ms. Richárd said.
The connection to Pope Leo is also personal for her. Ms. Richárd said her late uncle, a priest who served as vicar general in Trujillo, knew Father Robert Prevost from his years there. She quoted a line from a T-shirt she and a friend wear: “Peruana, como la papa y el papa” (“Peruvian, like the potato and the pope”).
El Señor de los Milagros, she said, is part of the Peruvian identity in a way similar to what Our Lady of Guadalupe is to the Mexican people. Part of that identity is believing in miracles and in God’s power to answer prayers.
Pope Leo, who is a Peruvian citizen and has described himself as “Peruvian at heart,” would presumably understand that identity. As cardinal and as pope, he has presided over El Señor de los Milagros celebrations at the Vatican. On Oct. 11, he greeted Rome’s Hermandad del Señor de los Milagros, the local brotherhood, after the Sunday Angelus, thanking them for their prayers before his pastoral visit to Peru this November.
Brotherhood and devotion
Carlos Zafra will be traveling to Peru to help carry an anda during the final procession on Oct. 28 in Lima. Mr. Zafra is president of the El Señor de los Milagros brotherhood at the Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels in Los Angeles.
The anda used in Los Angeles is carried by 32 to 36 men and takes about 90 minutes to assemble. The annual cathedral Mass draws 3,500, and the procession winds its way through downtown Los Angeles until it arrives at La Placita: Iglesia de Nuestra Señora de Los Angeles.
One year, Mr. Zafra recalled, a woman came up to him during the procession and wanted to get closer to the image. This is normally not allowed because, given the weight of the anda, it’s dangerous. But the woman told him she had been diagnosed with an incurable illness.
“We brought her closer to the Lord, and we prayed for her, and when I turned around to see her,” he said, stopping to compose himself, “I saw that her eyes were shining.”
Mr. Zafra himself came back to the devotion after years away. He is from Trujillo, a city in northern Peru where Pope Leo served as a priest for more than a decade. Since he was 8 or 9 years old, his grandmother would always take him by the hand and bring him to the town’s procession.
As a teenager, he stopped attending, and when he was 21, he came to the United States. Mr. Zafra saw that they had the image of El Señor de los Milagros at La Placita in Los Angeles, and he attended a procession. But for years he did not return.
“Then in the year 2000, I went to a nighttime reunion [members of the brotherhood] were hosting, and they welcomed me with a love that made me feel very special,” he said. “So I decided to become a part of the brotherhood in the following years, and I experienced the devotion and the faith.”
“When you’re away from your country, you feel closer to your roots, especially your roots in faith and devotion,” he said. “And El Señor de los Milagros brings us back to that.”
The election of Pope Leo has brought joy and gratitude to the hearts of Peruvians, Mr. Zafra said. At first, he was surprised to learn the cardinals had chosen an American. Then it puzzled him when Pope Leo began speaking of Chiclayo.
“I went and looked him up, and by the words he shared [from the balcony at St. Peter’s], I felt he had a very strong bond with the faithful in his diocese,” he said. “‘My beloved Diocese of Chiclayo,’ and I said ‘Wow.’ And I searched and discovered he was Peruvian by way of naturalization, like those of us here.”
Those in his brotherhood, Mr. Zafra explained, are Peruvian by birth, but “we chose to be Americans because we love this land.” He added, “We feel a deep connection to hard work, to bettering ourselves and an infinite gratitude because this country gives us the chance to do what we might not have been able to do in Peru.”
Mr. Zafra became a U.S. citizen, and he understands why Pope Leo became a citizen of Peru. “He loves the land and the people,” he said. “He saw the people grow there, and he was a part of it. He guided them and was a pastor of the people.”
‘The Lord is universal’
In Peru, Mónica Jiménez Suncíon grew up not knowing much about El Señor de los Milagros because her family was not Catholic. Her father was a Jehovah’s Witness, so she did not participate in many religious events, she said. Instead, she learned about the devotion as a teenager from her friends one fateful October.
“I can’t remember the year, but I was an adolescent when I also began paying attention to the processions, and I had my encounter with el Cristo Moreno, which is what we call [El Señor de los Milagros],” Ms. Jiménez Suncíon said. “Seeing so many people with such profound devotion—they bring their children and everything—that was the encounter I had with el Cristo Moreno.”
Ms. Jiménez Suncíon went to Catholic schools all her life, which she said helped her understand that despite different names—like Guatemala’s Black Christ of Esquipulas—the devotions are all about the same Jesus. Still, when she comes across an image of El Señor de los Milagros in another parish while traveling, she still says to herself, “Wow, they have him here, too!”
Ms. Jiménez Suncíon heads the devotion to El Señor de los Milagros at St. Margaret Church in Tempe, Ariz. The group moved there two years ago from Queen of Peace in Mesa, where it had been since 1995. The procession is open to everyone.
“We don’t make any distinction when it comes to race or social class—nothing—because the Lord is universal,” she said.
At St. Margaret’s, El Señor de los Milagros is celebrated as part of a regular Sunday Mass in October, so everyone at the predominantly Mexican parish learns about the Peruvian devotion. The procession happens on one weekend in October—this year it will be Oct. 24. But she hopes that, with time, the procession can add another weekend.
“The Lord wants us near him 365 days a year, not only in October,” she said.
Pope Leo, she says, is a joy and a point of pride for Peruvians. They followed him closely through his cancer surgery last week, and prayed for his recovery when news of his condition broke.
“Already in Peru,” Ms. Jiménez Suncíon said, speaking on the day Leo’s surgery was announced, “Masses are being celebrated for the health of Pope Leo.”
Pope Leo was discharged from Rome’s Gemelli Hospital on Oct. 17, four days after surgeons removed the lower lobe of his right lung. His surgeon, Dr. Stefano Margaritora, said there were “no clinical reasons” the pope should not still make his planned trip to Uruguay, Argentina and Peru next month.
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