Religion is gone
from Cuba, Mary isn’t
El Cobre proves it.
Several years ago I created this page in one of my art journals and named it Our Lady of Cobre. She is the patron saint of Cuba. I got the inspiration from one of the late Thomas Merton's poems "Song of Our Lady of Cobre," 1944. Merton's 1948 autobiography The Seven Storey Mountain played a key role in my life when I first read it in the early 1970s.
Her statue is in the mining town of El Cobre outside Santiago. She is also known as the Virgin of Charity (La Virgen de la Caridad).
She was designated as the patron saint of Cuba by the Pope in 1916. Pope Francis visited Cuba last year (2015) and said Mass at the Basílica Santuario Nacional de Nuestra Señora de la Caridad del Cobre. I found this article from the New Yorker very interesting. The Pope visited the late Fidel Castro and Raul Castro had visited the Pope at the Vatican earlier that year. The Pope apparently had a key role in healing U.S. and Cuba relations. I wonder what Thomas Merton would have thought about all this had he been alive to see it.
You can visit Recuerda mi Corazon to see the offerings of other participants in 12 Days of Mother Love.