Our Lady of Aparecida Portuguese: Nossa Senhora Aparecida or Nossa Senhora da Conceição Aparecida) is a title of the Blessed Virgin Mary associated with the Immaculate Conception.
Her image, a dark clay statue, is widely venerated by Brazilian Catholics, who consider her as the principal patroness of Brazil. Historical accounts state that the statue was originally found by three fishermen who miraculously caught many fish after invoking the Blessed Virgin Mary. The statue is currently housed in the Basilica of the National Shrine of Our Lady Aparecida in Aparecida, São Paulo, Brazil.
Colonial documents and papal bulls have referred to the image as Nossa Senhora da Conceição Aparecida. The feast day of Our Lady Aparecida in the Roman Rite is on October 12, which is also a public holiday in Brazil since 1980. The building in which the image is venerated was granted the title of a minor basilica by Pope John Paul II in 1980, and is the largest Marian shrine in the world, being able to hold up to 45,000 worshippers.
Controversy about the statue was ignited in May 1978 by an intruder who stole the clay statue, which was smashed as he was apprehended, from its shrine, and again in 1995, when an evangelical minister insulted and vandalized a copy of the statue on Brazilian national television, specifically on Rede Record, in what became known as the Chute na santa incident.
The following papal documents concern the famed statue:
Pope Leo XIII mentioned the Brazilian devotion in 1903
Pope Pius X granted a canonical coronation to the image on 8 September 1904
Pope Pius XI declared Mary under this title Patroness of Brazil through a papal bull of 16 July 1930, signed by Cardinal Eugenio Pacelli
Pope Paul VI granted the image her first golden rose on 12 August 1967
Pope John Paul II consecrated her new shrine and on the same date raised it to the rank of minor basilica on 4 July 1980
Pope Benedict XVI granted the image her second golden rose on 12 May 2007
Pope Francis granted the third golden rose on 9 October 2017, honoring the 300th anniversary of the devotion
According to the account of the discovery of the statue in October 1717, the Count of Assumar, Governor of the Captaincy of São Paulo and Minas Gerais, was passing through the area of Guaratinguetá, a small city in the Paraíba river valley, during a trip to Vila Rica, an important gold mining site.
As the people of Guaratinguetá decided to hold a feast in his honour, three fishermen, Domingos Garcia, João Alves, and Filipe Pedroso went down to the Paraíba waters to fish. The fishermen prayed to Our Lady of the Immaculate Conception that God would grant a good catch. The fishermen, having a run of bad luck, cast their nets in the River Paraiba and dragged up a headless statue of the Virgin Mary. They also salvaged the head and, according to the legend, then netted plenty of fish. After cleaning the statue, they found that it was a dark clay version of Our Lady of the Immaculate Conception. Legend has it that when the fishermen recovered the body, then the head, the slender figure of the Aparecida Virgin became so heavy that they couldn't budge it.
The fishermen named the statue Nossa Senhora da Conceição Aparecida (English: Our Lady of the Conception, the Appeared). Neighbors began to venerate the statue, which came to be known as Our Lady Aparecida (the Appeared), and devotion grew. The first chapel was built in 1745.
Devotion to the statue grew rapidly, particularly among Afro-Brazilians, not only for its black Madonna status, but also because it was reported to have performed a miracle for an enslaved young man. Over the years following its discovery, veneration of the Virgin invoked as Aparecida increased as many miracles were attributed to her. For the following fifteen years, the statue remained within Filipe Pedroso's family, and neighbors came to venerate it. Stories of Our Lady Aparecida's miracles were spread throughout Brazil, and the Pedroso family built her a chapel which soon became too small for so many worshippers. In 1737 the priest of Guaratinguetá built her a chapel on the Morro dos Coqueiros (Hill of Coconut Palms), where public visits began in July 1745.
The number of worshippers increased dramatically, and in 1834 work on a larger church was begun; this became known as the "Old Basilica" when work on the even larger "New Basilica" was started in 1955; it received pontifical approbation in 1980.
In 1928 the "City of Aparecida" was consolidated around the old Basílica.