Iglesia de las Carmelitas Descalzas, Los Andes, Romanesque Revival monastery church in Los Andes, Chile.
The Iglesia de las Carmelitas Descalzas is a brick monastery church in Los Andes, Chile, with a neo-Gothic facade and a bell gable, built between 1920 and 1925. Its convent cloister follows a neo-Romanesque style, and the two-story building houses a museum on the upper floor with photographs of Teresa of the Andes, religious vestments, and rooms recreating Carmelite life.
The Los Andes Carmelite monastery began in Curimón, where a group of Discalced Carmelites moved from Valparaíso in 1898. Due to inconveniences in the area, the community relocated to Los Andes in 1902, settling in an old house on Avenida Sarmiento. The convent and church were declared a National Monument of Chile in 1987, and the community moved to the sanctuary at Auco that same year.
Teresa of the Andes, born Juanita Fernández Solar, entered the monastery in 1919 as Sister Teresa of Jesus and died there on 12 April 1920; her remains were moved in 1940 to a crypt in the centre of the church's lower choir, which drew growing numbers of pilgrims. The community left for Auco in 1987 and her remains reached the new sanctuary in December 1988.
The former convent and church stand in Los Andes, in the Valparaíso Region; the complex was declared a National Monument on 23 September 1987. The museum occupies the second floor of the two-storey convent, reached from the cloister. The community left for the Auco sanctuary in Rinconada in 1987, so the site is no longer an active Carmelite monastery.
Teresa of the Andes was canonized by Pope John Paul II in 1993, making her the first person born in Chile to be declared a saint by the Catholic Church. This makes the monastery one of the few places in Latin America where you can visit the tomb of a locally born saint.
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