El Santuario de Chimayó
The most visited Catholic pilgrimage site in the United States. Holy dirt from a small room, crutches left at the altar, an adobe church that looks like it grew out of the valley. People come for healing, and for a Catholicism that still smells like woodsmoke.
Chimayó, New MexicoFeast Holy Week (the walking pilgrimage from Santa Fe); 1 June, St. James, is also kept.
The pilgrimage
To pray for the sick, and to take a pinch of the tierra bendita as generations have.
The Holy Week walk from Santa Fe is one of the last great American pilgrim roads.
Because the Southwest’s faith is older than the United States, and Chimayó still looks like it.
The apparition, the Gospel sign, the body, the image — whatever this place is known for, told as a file of its own.
