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By Rebecca Janzen

In 1950, someone bought a postcard in the city of Zacatecas, Mexico, that portrayed Nuestra Señora del Patrocinio de la Bufa. This person described some devotional practices on the back of the card in Spanish and eventually sent the postcard to the director of the Marian library, who then archived it.

Marian Apparition Sites and Mining Communities

Throughout the Americas and the Caribbean, miners, like other Catholic people, revere the Virgin Mary. Miners and their communities may participate in feast day celebrations; make promises to her; build chapels or small shrines to her; and be involved in confraternities devoted to her that organize the feast day celebrations, take care of sick people and people living in poverty, and ensure dignified burials for their members. There are many shrines in and near mines across the region. They include the shrine of Nuestra Señora del Patrocinio de la Bufa in Mexico, as well as shrines where apparitions of the Virgin Mary occurred, such as at a mine entrance in Bolivia, to miners in Cuba, and to lay brotherhoods in Brazil. 

My current research project, “Mining Religion,” examines just a few of these shrines in and near mines in the Americas. As the recipient of the 2024 Marian Library Visiting Scholar Fellowship, I spent two weeks in the Marian Library at the University of Dayton to expand beyond what I have done previously, both thematically and geographically. I had previously studied religion, but when this had included Catholicism, my research focused on portrayals of the Virgin of Talpa or short articles about the Virgin of Guadalupe and had been primarily focused on Mexico. The Marian library advanced my research significantly, as it holds significant resources in understanding the Virgin Mary in Mexico and around the world. 

Making Connections With University of Dayton Resources

I learned about Catholic theological understandings of Mary and how they may relate to mining through a conversation with University of Dayton Professor Meghan Henning, whose most recent book, Hell Hath No Fury, addresses connections between Mary and mines. Rare books and circulating books further deepened my understanding of some theological and doctrinal issues, particularly concerning the Immaculate Conception.

While I had previously researched religion, I had never examined Marian iconography or Catholic theology in as much depth as my current project requires. A conversation with Father Johann Roten, S.M., former director of the Marian Library, helped me better understand artistic representations of the Virgin Mary, as did multiple reference books in the library. One of them was dedicated to analyzing the famous painting “Virgin Mary of the Cerro Rico” from Potosí, Bolivia. 

The library also holds materials about several shrines I was interested in learning more about and resources about religious practices in different Latin American countries. These included shrines to Our Lady of Charity del Cobre, who may have appeared to some miners and whose shrine in Cuba is near former copper and iron mines. I found material about this apparition and devotional practices around it in the library’s postcards, holy cards and ephemera. Other sites of devotion were new to me and have changed the scope of my research, like the postcard indicating an important shrine for miners in Zacatecas, Mexico, as well as a play about a Marian apparition in Llallagua, Bolivia. Here, too, conversations with UD faculty were important. I discussed Catholic religious practices with Neomi de Anda, associate professor of religious studies and executive director of the International Marian Research Institute, whose work helped me understand some of the most important elements of Marian devotion in Latin America.  

The “expansive Sutton File collection,” in the words of former Marian library fellow Alyssa Maldonado Estrada, also had significant resources for my project. It included articles in Catholic newspapers about shrines to Our Lady of Charity del Cobre and photographs and newspaper articles about the Basilica to Our Lady of the Rosary built inside of a salt mine in Zipaquirá, Colombia. 

I appreciated the ways the Marian library — particularly Michele Jennings — connected me with art and religious objects such as devotional candles and scapulars so that I could gain a better understanding of objects that might be included at official shrines or that would be included in home altars to the same apparitions of the Virgin Mary. 

Developing a Marian Research Community

I was at the library while another fellow — Giovanna Sarto, a doctoral candidate in religious studies at the Federal University of Juiz de Fora in Brazil and the recipient of the first Marian Library Graduate Fellowship — was there, and after we discussed elements of my project that deal with Brazil, she connected me to networks of Brazilian theologians and scholars of religion. 

Having the opportunity to examine a range of materials reminded me that this connection between shrines to the Virgin Mary and mining has been previously studied — and that there is so much more to learn. 

— Rebecca Janzen is a professor of Spanish and comparative literature at the University of South Carolina and received the 2024 Marian Visiting Scholar Fellowship.