Sanctuaire marial de Yagma, Minor basilica in Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso.
The Yagma Marian sanctuary is a minor basilica in Ouagadougou featuring a main church building alongside various facilities for visitors. It includes a grotto dedicated to prayer, residential spaces for pilgrims, and administrative areas spread across the grounds.
Two laymen, Laurent Ghilat and François Dakoure, with the support of the parish priest Father Guirma, cleared a hill in Yagma in 1967 and built a replica of the Lourdes grotto. The first pilgrim group was welcomed on 31 March 1968, and in 1971 Cardinal Paul Zoungrana made the site a diocesan pilgrimage destination. The Burkina-Niger bishops' conference declared it a national shrine on 6 February 1988.
The Virgin Mary is venerated here as "Queen of Burkina", a title that grew from the shrine's popularity. Each parish in Burkina Faso has its own day for the annual pilgrimage, and a grand national pilgrimage has been held every two years since 1995. The rosary, the Liturgy of the Hours and the Stations of the Cross are prayed on site.
The basilica seats about 2,200 people and measures 89.34 m long, 46.30 m wide and 26.5 m high at the nave. A hostel on the 112-hectare hill sleeps 500 pilgrims in dormitories, and three priests live in the presbytery. The national pilgrimage is held every two years, while each parish has its own annual day here.
The sanctuary does not trace its origin to a Marian apparition. In 1966 Archbishop Paul Zoungrana told Christians wanting a place of Marian devotion to find and prepare a site, and the hill of Yagma was chosen the following year. A reported apparition to a young girl in 1986 was condemned by the Church ten years later.
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