Santuario Diocesano de Nuestra Señora de Guadalupe, "La Concordia", Baroque church in Orizaba, Mexico.
The Santuario de la Concordia is a church built around 1725 by the Oratory of Saint Philip Neri, who added an adjoining convent oratory that still stands. Its facade bears a popular-style relief of the Virgin of Guadalupe framed by Churrigueresque ornament, and inside are two oil-painted altarpieces. The complex has three patios; a 1819 earthquake destroyed its main tower.
The neighbourhood of Omiquila, founded in 1601 by an indigenous community, asked for a church but only received permission in 1709 from Pedro Nogales Dávila, bishop of Puebla. The first Guadalupe temple, built of forked posts and straw, collapsed; the present church was raised by the Oratory of Saint Philip Neri around 1725. An 1819 earthquake destroyed its main tower, and in 1889 it became a fixed vicariate.
Each year a program of pilgrimages leads up to the feast of the Virgin of Guadalupe on 12 December. The sanctuary bears the name La Concordia, and the blind indigenous man Domingo de Ramos gave the land for the first chapel and looked after it.
The church stands in the Omiquila neighbourhood, east of Orizaba's centre, on the site where a blind indigenous man named Domingo de Ramos gave up his plot and cared for the early chapel. The old path from the San Miguel parish was muddy and deserted, so in rainy seasons priests did not come and mass was paid for with twelve reales. The adjoining Oratorio de San Felipe Neri, once a hospital and jail, has housed the Museo de Arte del Estado de Veracruz since 1992.
The church's full title is Santuario de Santa María de Guadalupe "La Concordia", and the name Concordia is used as its everyday designation. The site began in the barrio of Omiquila, founded in 1601 by an indigenous community cut off from the city centre by muddy swamps, which is why they asked for their own church.
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