by Richard Leonardi
Doña Rosa’s knees began to bleed. She did not notice. The ground-in wounds from walking on her knees, the brilliant sun, and dizzying heat inside a breathless church made Doña Rosa’s head spin and her knees numb, immune to all but her goal.
When she reached the altar, stained black with the smoke of candles, Doña Rosa began to weep, her sobs punctuating the prayer she has recited for more than half a century. Doña Rosa raised her head and gazed through a fog of tears at the image of the Virgin. She was not alone.
Nicaragua’s devotion to the Virgin Mary or la Virgen María is historic, profound, and very much alive. It could be said that the Virgin Mary holds more emotional and spiritual importance in Nicaragua than in any other country in the world. Nicaragua has several unique celebrations to the Virgin and two of them in December commemorate María’s Immaculate Conception of Jesus Christ. The most renowned is La Purísima or Gritería, a centuries-old tradition that’s uniquely Nicaraguan.