The annual New York archdiocesan Mass in honor of Our Lady of Caacupe is scheduled to be celebrated Sunday, December 10 at 4 p.m. at St. Patrick’s Cathedral in Manhattan.

Our Lady of Caacupe is a devotional tradition in Paraguay. Cardinal Adalberto Martínez Flores of the Archdiocese of Asunción, Paraguay, will serve as principal celebrant and homilist.

The following Sunday, December 17, the annual archdiocesan Mass in honor of Our Lady of Nube is planned for 2 p.m., also at St. Patrick’s Cathedral. Archbishop Luis Cabrera Herrera of Guayaquil, Ecuador, will serve as principal celebrant and homilist for this Ecuadoran devotional tradition.      

Both Masses will be celebrated in Spanish.    

“This (Caacupe) Mass is very important for people in the Paraguayan community here in New York, but also for those who live in Connecticut and New Jersey,” Laura Coleman, a lead coordinator with the New York archdiocesan Our Lady of Caacupe Committee, told The Good Newsroom.  

There are concentrations of immigrants from Paraguay in several parts of the Tri-State area, including Hillsborough, New Jersey, Bridgeport, Connecticut, and the Elmhurst section of Queens, Coleman noted. Their devotion to Our Lady of Caacupe plays a key role in their Catholic faith journey, and they organize Caacupe Mass celebrations in their home parishes – in addition to gratefully attending the St. Patrick’s Cathedral Our Lady of Caacupe Mass, she said. Last year was the first annual Caacupe Mass at the cathedral.          

As for annual Masses at St. Patrick’s Cathedral associated with Ecuador, organizers with those committees have long expressed gratitude to the archdiocese for the many years of Ecuadorian Marian Masses there, including Our Lady of Nube.

Our Lady of Caacupe

Virgin of Caacupé Day takes place every December 8 and has been a revered Paraguayan tradition since the early 17th century. Thousands of pilgrims descend on the small town of Caacupe in central Paraguay to commemorate the anniversary of a Marian apparition. In 1600, a sculptor named José from the Guaraní tribe escaped near death by avoiding a group of men from a rival tribe, through Marian intervention, in a settlement that later became the town of Caacupe. Fulfilling a promise to Our Lady he made when his life was being threatened, Jose carved two beautiful statues of the Virgin Mary as an expression of gratitude. Today, this apparition of the Virgin Mary is now memorialized in the Cathedral Basilica of Our Lady of Miracles in Caacupé. The city is one of Paraguay’s most prominent spiritual centers. 

Our Lady of Nube

When Bishop Sancho de Andrade y Figueroa of Quito, Ecuador, was gravely ill, the local faithful organized a prayer procession in late December 1696, with the image of Mary from the Church of Guapulo. On their way, the Blessed Mother appeared in the sky on a cloud, witnessed by about 500 people. 

The bishop‘s health miraculously recovered. The Franciscan Friars later founded a sanctuary in Azogues, known as the Santuario de la Virgen de la Nube. Now the Fiesta de la Virgen de la Nube takes place in Azogues every year on January 1. The veneration was also adopted by nuns in Lima which popularized it in Peru.