Gaspar Quintana J., CMF
Bishop of Copiapó, Chile
President of the Confederation of Sanctuaries in Latin-America
And in charge of Sanctuaries and Popular Religiosity of CELAM.

Keeping in mind “the spirituality of communion” mentioned by John-Paul II in his apostolic letter “Novo Millennio Ineunte” (n. 45), I wish to share with these Asian churches the experience carried out in our American Continent on evangelization parting from these sanctuaries.

I will treat the theme under three headings:
I. Data from recent history
II. Goals of the Confederation of American Sanctuaries
III. Some perspective for future work
IV. Profile of pilgrims to 8 Sanctuaries in Chile.

I. Data from recent history
There have been sanctuaries in Latin-America and the Caribbean from the start after the arrival of Spaniards and Portuguese at the end of the 15th century. The most important of them was Our Lady of Guadalupe. Each sanctuary, from its proper reality and place, took pastoral care of the faithful as well as it could and according to its resources.

We do not have any important historical data allowing us to think that there was any particular kind of organization to work together with the thousands and thousands of pilgrims going to the different sanctuaries all through the Continent.

That is why I say that to get together, to organize and coordinate in a Confederation is part of recent history.

In fact, it was in 1979 that the Bishops of the Latin-America Council of Bishops (CELAM), speaking of an evangelization of culture, emphasize popular religiosity as something identifying Latin American culture.

Describing this popular religiosity of our people in the Continent, they kept repeating, in the words of John-Paul II, that sanctuaries “are privileged places of evangelization” (Speech at Zapopan, 1978).

With this clear cut and final appraisal of popular piety coming from the Continent’s Bishops, as a means to announce the Good News of Jesus, the idea has sprung of forming a great Confederation of Sanctuaries starting with National Sanctuaries and the most important in each country.

It was in this way that the rectors of the National Sanctuary of Maipú, Chile, began to contact the rectors of national Sanctuaries in Paraguay, Uruguay, Argentine and Brazil. They met with an excellent welcome.

As a concrete means of giving substance to this project, a series of meetings was started between the rectors of Sanctuaries. These were held in different participating countries with the following schedule:

*1st Encounter: 1980, in Caacupé, Paraguay: the Sanctuaries of the Cono Sur meet and lay down fundamental guiding lines for Latin America’s pastoral work.
*2nd Encounter: 1981 in Pilar, Argentine: the Sanctuary is studied as a privileged place for culture evangelization, to manifest faith, justice and mercy.
*3rd Encounter: 1982, in Aparecida, Brazil: delegates from Mexico came to this meeting. Sanctuaries are studied as a privileged place for local churches to evangelize whole crowds of people. It is also studied integration of Sanctuaries’ ministry with organic ministry of a particular church.
*4th Encounter: 1983, La Florida, Santiago de Chile: Bolivia and a Delegate from CELAM are present. They search for the main roots of popular religiosity in Latin America. Peru is also present at this meeting. Evangelization is considered as all-covering language, just as that of first evangelization.
5th Encounter: 1984, in Montevideo, Uruguay: Peru is also present at this meeting. Evangelization is considered as all-covering language, just as that of first evangelization.
*6th Encounter: 1985, in Caaupé, Paraguay: Ecuador joins in. Its objective was to examine the role of these Sanctuaries in the Continent’s evangelization at this moment as well as their pastoral and evangelizing function in urban centers.
*7th Encounter: 1986, in Lima, Peru: with the presence of Colombia. The main theme was Sanctuaries as servants to the New Evangelization. The approval of the Statutes of the Secretariat meant an important step forward.
*8th Encounter: 1987, in Florencio Varela, Buenos Aires, Argentine: subjects studied were the function and importance of liturgy in the Sanctuaries taking into account the death situations present in Latin America.

At this Encounter, a new Secretariat was elected and Argentine became the chosen one. The decision was taken at that moment to find a link with CELAM and with all the other Sanctuaries in Latin American countries in view of creating a great federation by 1992, anniversary of the discovery of America.
*9th Encounter: 1989, in Aparecida, Brazil: the central theme of reflection was the preoccupation and efforts in Sanctuaries regarding sects and the role of lay people in this ministry.
10th Encounter: 1990, in Lo Cañas, Chile: here it was again studied with new impetus the New Evangelization in view of the year 2000. A great revision was made of the road covered, recognizing successes and challenges to come.

*First Congress of Rectors of Sanctuaries in America, in Quito, Ecuador.

It coincided with the 500 years after the discovery of America and a great step was taken avec the integration of several countries. The creation of the Confederation of the Continent’s Sanctuaries was approved, divided into four regions: Cono Sur, Bolivian countries, Central America and the Caribbean, and Mexico.

11th Encounter: 1993, in Pilar, Argentine, for the Cono Sur.
Its central theme was the Sanctuary as place of conversion and catechetical school in the New Evangelization. The image of the Rector of a Sanctuary was also treated as well as theological foundations of its spirituality and pastoral activity.

An Encounter in Colombia was prepared for 1996 whose purpose would be to prepare the 2nd Latin American Congress. The Brazil federation was chosen to coordinate the Cono Sur for the period 1994-1998.

2nd Latin American Congress: 1997, in Toluca, Mexico:
All discussions were centered around the celebration of the Jubilee, the opening of the third millennium of “Jesus Christ, the same yesterday, today and for ever”. Mexico is chosen as President of the Confederation and Chile is designated as central office for the third Congress in 2002.

3rd Latin American Congress: 2002, in Santiago de Chile:
Its central themes were the pilgrim’s identity and his motivations, theology of the Sanctuary as remembrance, presence and prophecy; proposals for a Sanctuary ministry in the new millennium. The existence and functioning of the Confederation were reasserted and the statutes of the Confederation were finally drafted. An important step was the assistance of the representatives of the Pontifical Council of Ministry among Immigrants and Itinerants and representatives of Sanctuaries in Canada and the United States.

This is, broadly speaking, the history of the Confederation. Without any doubt, its progressive organization and functioning have greatly helped the Evangelization of America, “the Continent of hope”, as John Paul II has called it.

II. Goal of the Confederation

In the light of the experience lived by the Sanctuaries and of the orientations of the documents of the Church’s teaching, we could phrase the goals of the Confederation as follows:

• To value popular piety, deeply rooted in several American countries, in numerous expressions, giving preference to pilgrimages to a Sanctuary, “privileged place of Evangelization”. The CELAM Conference, gathered in Santo Domingo, (1992), strongly insisted on the need to value Popular Piety and its several accompanying expressions. Were we not do it, always purifying them and opening them to new situations, secularism would impose itself more strongly and inculturation of the Gospel would become very difficult (cf SD, 53).
• To study in depth le different aspects of the identity of the Sanctuary and the pilgrimage: anthropological, sociological, theological, padagogico-pastoral, etc.
• To draft and to assume, in an atmosphere of liberty and respect, common criteria allowing a coordinated and coherent work according to the Continent’s different socio-cultural and religious realities.
• To share and analyze the different pastoral experiences of each Sanctuary in order to “discover in popular religiosity the true spiritual values so as to enrich them with elements of genuine catholic doctrine, so that this religiosity might lead to a sincere engegament to conversion and to a concrete experience of charity” (Ecclesia in America, 16).

Bishops and Sanctuary rectors. with their respective Ministry Teams, are well aware that it is worth undertaking all efforts to announce the Good News in the Sanctuary since there are millions of pilgrims visiting them each year in almost all of the 400 Sanctuaries of some importance throughout the extended geography of catholic faith in America.

III. Some perspectives for the new millennium

The reflection carried out these last years in the Confederation of Sanctuaries in Latin America and the Caribbean on what kind of evangelization must be done as a ministry service to the thousands of pilgrims, considers the following perspectives considered as challenges:

1. To always have in mind the missionary mandate of Jesus: “Go out into the whole world and proclaim the Good News” (Mc 16, 15). John Paul II has modernized this mandate for the new millennium with “to row out at sea” addressed to Peter by the Lord (Lk 5, 4; NMI, n.1). This demands a Church that is “house and school of communion” (MNI, , 43) that puts forth men and women as witnesses of faith and models of Christian life (NMI, n.7).
2. To deepen, with a trinitarian, Christological, ecclesiological and anthropological dimension, a “spirituality of evangelization of culture”, a spirituality that may give consistence, fruitfulness and creativity to all the evangelizing tasks of the sanctuary in the new millennium. Under this dimension, the Sanctuary, alike all the Church’s persons and institutions, demands holiness of life of its rectors as a pastoral urgency. (NMI, n.30).
3. To announce the Good News of Jesus to Latin American and Caribbean popular Catholicism starting from the fact that “our people loves pilgrimages” Puebla, 232). This implies helping them to grasp and live a deep existential and Christian sense of pilgrimage and to keep on marching amidst sufferings and problems towards the definitive Sanctuary, with a great hope in the God of the poor.
4. For a better evangelization, to create a Pastoral Team of the Sanctuary and to form those in charge with a pastoral pedagogy favoring a better inculturation of the Gospel in a globalized world. A pedagogy that will promote the person’s dignity, that will prepare them to be builders of a more just and fraternal society and that will form a critical attitude in the face of new alternative religiosities(sects, pseudo-religious movements, New Age, etc.).
5. To assess pastoral work in the Sanctuary in the light criteria presented by the Latin American Bishops in the Puebla document (1978), still valid, that is to say: “Everything must make of the baptized more sons in the Son, more brothers in the Church, more responsible missionaries to spread the Kingdom” (Puebla, 459).

IV. A pilgrim’s profile according to 8 Chile’s Sanctuaries.

It would seem interesting, for the sake of information, the results of a poll realized among some 10 000 pilgrims from 8 Sanctuaries in Chile. They would allow us to outline a pilgrim’s profile:
• They are mainly women
• Generally, they are adults, with a mean age of 42,3
• There are two majority types of pilgrims:
a) some very old
b) others rather recent
• Most come to pray
• Most attend mass in the Sanctuary several times a year
• Most attend mass with their families
• Most value greatly the site: esthetics, landscape, architecture, decoration.
• As for Church participation, generally speaking hardly one fourth takes part in a Church activity, especially within the parish framework.

Copiapó, September 17, 2003

Gaspar Quintana J., CMF
Bishop of Copiapó, Chile