Penultimate Sunday in April

Virgen de La Cabeza, El Carpio, Córdoba, Andalucia, Spain

Devotion to the Virgin of the Head in Andalusia originated in Andújar in the province of Jaén, where on the night of August 11-12, 1227, an old herder went to investigate some mysterious lights in the Sierra Morena and found a statue of the Virgin in the rocks. He heard her voice requesting a chapel and recovered the use of his left arm, long paralyzed. The resulting shrine attracted pilgrims from the entire region, and confraternities arose in many places to honor the Virgen de la Cabeza, popularly called La Morenita, the Little Dark Lady. Her confraternity in El Carpio, in the neighboring province of  Córdoba, disbanded in the 1800s and her statue moved to St. Peter's chapel. Devotion revived in the 1900s. In 1957, imaginero Juan Martínez Cerrillo carved a new statue for the Virgin's chapel in El Carpio, and in 1959, a new Confraternity formed. On the next to last Sunday in April, a procession of town officials and pilgrims carries the statue in procession to the Church of the Assumption. (Information from Romerías de España organizadas por Comunidades Autónomas, www.lasromerias.com, and other sources. Picture from "Procession Morenita El Carpio 2008," Cofradia Virgen de La Cabeza, cid-e7a1a6986012fde8.skydrive.live.com.)