Costa Rica Religions. Today many Ticos will be on their hands and knees…
Catholic Costa Rica shows a typical tolerance for other religious practices but overall any extreme demonstration of faith is shrugged off, as Vicky Longland explains…
At the end of July, many Ticos will be on their hands and knees. Not as an aftermath to some national drinking binge: on the contrary. Costa Ricans will be heading on foot or even crawling to Cartago, east of San Jose, former capital city and Costa Rica’s religious center, reciting their rosaries and chanting prayers during the country’s biggest annual religious celebration.
La Virgen de los Angeles (The Lady of the Angels), Costa Rica’s patron saint, is the reason for all this attention and August 2nd heralds the culmination of a pilgrimage to her shrine at Cartago’s imposing Basilica de Nuestra Senora de la Concepcion.
She is attributed with miraculous healing powers and followers come to thank her for cures produced in the past year or to plead for future miracles.
The day is a national public holiday but some of the faithful will have been travelling for days beforehand to reach their destination, several walking the whole way from all over the country.
Those wonderful shrubs in front of the church in Zarcero – Photo’ by Scott Oliver
The 22 km of highway between San Jose and Cartago is closed to vehicle traffic providing safe passage for the tide of pedestrians on their slow way to pay homage inside the beautiful wood-panelled Basilica, which will be crammed with the devout crawling up the main aisle regardless of their exhaustion and bleeding knees.
In typical Tico fashion, solemnity and humble piety will vie with a party atmosphere and a roadside full of vendors selling drinks, snacks and sun hats.
Although lacking the colorful costumes and music of other Central American religious festivities with their predominantly indigenous groups to add a rainbow-hued gaiety to the proceedings, this is nonetheless Costa Rica’s major religious event alongside Easter and Christmas and they literally go to town to honor their favorite saint.
The story behind La Virgen de los Angeles goes back to 1635 when a mulatto peasant girl, Juana Pereira, found a tiny black stone statue of the Virgin and Christ child. She took the statue home and hid it in a box but twice the statue mysteriously returned to its original spot.
Today’s cathedral is erected on the site where Juana found the statue and ‘La Negrita’, as she is affectionately called, resides in a jewel-encrusted shrine above the main altar.
A spiral walkway descends to the actual grotto crammed with ex-votos and charms from her followers, often shaped as human body parts to ‘cover’ those particular problem areas that need healing… Holy water is on sale at a nearby shop along with shelves of religious trinkets to satisfy shopaholic pilgrims.
No Extremists Please!
This is the one religious festival that gets some national coverage, but since living in Costa Rica, I have found that although my local church in Pozos de Santa Ana gets its Sunday crowd, religion doesn’t exactly pervade the streets.
Unlike other Latin American countries, there is little daily evidence of high-profile church involvement in the country’s politics, education or media.
Old Church in Puriscal – Photo’ by Scott Oliver
Some theories I found suggest that the ties between God and the State have historically been weak because several early liberal administrations were essentially secular. Another offers that with no numerous and impoverished indigenous communities needing heavenly promises to alleviate their suffering on earth the essentially modern-thinking, independent Costa Ricans didn’t need Catholic doctrine to help them out – they were doing fine by themselves, thank you.
Certainly these days, a family’s church attendance is typically limited to weddings, funerals and baptisms. Holy Week just before Easter is a national holiday and the holiest period in the Catholic calendar, but while some will stay in San Jose for the processions and church masses, the majority use it as a great excuse to head for the beach and start partying.
Some 70% of Costa Ricans are Catholic and since 1949, the Constitution declared Catholicism the country’s official state religion but with complete freedom of religious choice. The state helps with its upkeep but offers no special tax exemption for its management. In fact, religious instruction is not even obligatory for students in state-run schools.
A further 19% belong to other non-Catholic faiths divided mainly into Protestants, Mormons, Jehovah’s Witnesses and Seventh-Day Adventists. Non-Christian faiths cover Judaism, Islam, the Bahai and Hinduism.
Come One, Come All.
Apart from a casual ‘Si Dios quiere’ (God willing) in daily conversation and the usual car stickers, God does not really have a big say in the mainstream Tico way of life or conduct.
But it is precisely the country’s traditional tolerance that attracted Jews seeking refuge from the Second World War and the Quaker community that was founded in the Monteverde hills by conscientious objectors in the 1950s during the Korean War.
The Mormons have built an imposing temple near the international airport that serves Panama, Nicaragua and Honduras as well as Costa Rica and the Seventh-Day Adventists run a university serving students throughout the Caribbean.
Ruinas de Ujarras – Photo’ by Scott Oliver
The Catholics must have persevered though because even the tiniest village in the backwoods is centered on its plaza with an often disproportionately large church on the western side and usually with a soccer pitch in front, but when the town’s saint’s day is celebrated with keen soccer competitions, dancing and drinking more than reverence in church, one does have to wonder just which is the religion of the day …
Friends of mine took part in La Negrita’s pilgrimage last year and said it was wonderful: they chatted to fellow pilgrims, took photos, soaked up the atmosphere and views and thoroughly enjoyed the camaraderie of the day.
So this very lapsed Christian might just be on her knees next week, heading to pay respects to a little black statue at the end of the road and appreciating yet another very Tico aspect of Costa Rica, and thanking any or all of the gods that religious intolerance are two words that don’t go together in Costa Rica.
1) Religious Freedom Report, 2003 – U.S. State Department
Written by Vicky Longland who has spent all her adult life in Latin and Central America originally as head of the translation department for an international human development organisation and currently working as a freelance translator and writer for several national and world-wide publications, specialising in people’s issues, the environment and lifestyles.
Andrew Makarik
to@welovecostarica.comAndrew Makarik is the main editor of WeLoveCostaRica, a fan of this sunny country. He is also a loving husband and a has a lovely daughter. By being a devoted family man and the biggest Costa Rica fan, he wants to make more people feel at home there. WeLoveCostaRica unites people and helps them find new home or a new travel destination. This website is a friendly community where everyone can find not only information, but also new friends and travel pals. Andrew is also passionate about IT and programming, so he himself maintains a friendly atmosphere in this cozy environment of WeLoveCostaRica.com.
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