The Pilgrimage of Our Lady of Santa Cruz: A Story of Faith and Tradition

The pilgrimage of Our Lady of Santa Cruz, this Thursday, May 18 of the Ascension, will again attract thousands of people to the sanctuary, built almost sixty years ago by Pieds-noirs on the heights of Mas de Mingue, in Nimes.

This year, the National Friends of Our Lady of Santa Cruz Association is celebrating its 60th anniversary, a great opportunity to recall the fervor of this pilgrimage, the history of “rain miracle” in Oran.

If, in the Pyrénées-Orientales or in the Cévennes, the decision was recently taken to organize a procession to bring back the rain and thus fight against the drought, in 1849, in Oran, it was rather to put an end to the cholera epidemic.

Return of tradition

On November 4 of that year, after having implored the Virgin in Oran, the rain fell in abundance, then the epidemic subsided. It is the famous “rain miracle” which subsequently led to the construction of a sanctuary on the heights of Oran inaugurated on May 9, 1850, Ascension Day.

When many Pieds-noirs came to settle, after the Algerian war, in public housing at Mas de Mingue (350 families in September 1963, i.e. around 1,200 people, 95% of whom were Oranians), the idea of a return of the tradition of Santa Cruz to Nîmes quickly imposed itself.

The statue among the parishioners

Antoine Candela, president of the neighborhood committee, and Antoine Roca, his counterpart from the Parents’ Association, then called on the clerics to do so. And so, on November 3, 1963, the National Association of Friends of Our Lady of Santa Cruz was born during a constituent assembly.

But before building the sanctuary that we know today, it was necessary to repatriate the Virgin of Santa Cruz, that of “rain miracle”. As early as 1964, steps were taken with Monsignor Rougé and Monsignor Lacaste, the latter thus giving his agreement, considering that the parishioners had left Oran. The place of the statue of the Virgin was thus to be found among them, at the Mas de Mingue.

It took a little longer for its transfer by the French Navy, in 1965. Antoine Candela hosted the statue at his home in the early days before it was in the church of Courbessac.

Thanks to the two Antoines, Father Hébrard and the granting of a plot of 5,000 m² at the Mas de Mingue for a symbolic franc, a generous gesture from the owner René Denis, the foundations of a future sanctuary have been laid.

Steps

Thus, the site grew in size in stages: inauguration of the first part on May 20, 1969, blessing of the cave on October 27, 1972, the right wing completed in 1975, carillon with six bells of Relizane dominating that of Mostaganem in August 1989.

Many donors now make it possible to maintain the sanctuary, according to the president of the National Association of Our Lady of Santa Cruz Roger Pessoles, born in the Oran region in 1961: “I want to open the sanctuary more and more, which does not live only on Ascension Day but all year round with, especially since 2018, a procession, open-air mass and meal on August 15”.

This Thursday, May 18, for the 58th time, a pilgrimage will take place within this sanctuary patiently built to fight against uprooting in the early days and to perpetuate the memory of our days.