Return of the Virgin

Black crepe and mourning bands hung from every window and door in town. Despite frequent showers, hundreds knelt in prayer before the padlocked church. Only a week before, thieves had broken into the basilica of Cartago, 15 miles from San Jose, murdered a guard, and stolen the jewel-decked, five-inch image of Costa Rica's patroness, Our Lady of the Angels. With it, they had taken $185,000 worth of gold and jewels belonging to the church.

All over the country, customarily cheerful ticos were wrapped in deepest gloom. "The Most Sacred Little Black One," said by tradition to have been given by the Virgin to a negro slave girl at the site of the basilica more than 300 years ago, is Costa Rica's most venerated relic. Costa Ricans took what hope they could from the old legend that the image had disappeared once before in colonial days, only to turn up again.

Above the Pulpit. As the days went by, even that hope began to fade. Local investigators seemed to be getting nowhere; the FBI was asked to send an agent from Washington to help. His arrival gave birth to a spate of rumors: the eyeballs of the dead guard were being flown to Washington because they had retained the image of the last person he saw before his death; the G-man had brought along bloodhounds which had already tracked down a suspect. In reality, the FBI man started out much less spectacularly, going over the locked church with a magnifying glass and fingerprint powder. When he had finished, he ordered the church unlocked. Glumly, Padre Carlos Galves rounded up a group of helpers, went into the basilica to prepare for the next day's Mass.

Three of the cleaners started sweeping and dusting along the aisles. Wizened, stoop-shouldered Claudio Aguilar, who works on a neighboring farm, went to work on the pulpit. After a while, he stepped down, dragged over a ladder, and climbed to the pulpit's top. He explained later: "It was dark, but I had a feeling that I saw something in the corner. I put out my hand and felt something--I began to tremble." At Claudio's cries of "I see it! I see it!" the others rushed over to find him holding the greenish-black stone statuette of Our Lady of the Angels.

Mass at Midnight. At the news of the discovery, the whole country went wild. Soon all roads to Cartago were choked with pilgrims--afoot, in oxcarts, and automobiles. Ahead of them they could see hundreds of skyrockets set off by delirious cartagineses.

Near midnight President Otilio Ulate arrived to join the crowd packed into the steaming church. Archbishop Sanabria celebrated Mass; brilliantly illuminated in her golden monstrance above the altar,, the black Virgin smiled down once more on her flock. In the first joyful hours, only the archbishop and the police seemed to remember the murder and the missing gold and jewels.

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