Walsingham: el santuario que Enrique VIII quemó
Little Walsingham, Norfolk, Inglaterra · 1061 – 1538 – 1934
The vision of Ricarda de Faverches, 1061
In 1061, Ricarda de Faverches, noble lady of Norfolk County, had an apparition of the Virgin Mary in which she asked her to build an exact replica of the Holy House of Nazareth in the small town of Walsingham, in Norfolk County. Ricarda obeyed: he raised the "House of Our Lady" with the same measures as the Annunciation of Nazareth and commissioned a wooden image of Mary with the Child.
The sanctuary grew rapidly in fame. In the 12th century the Augustines received their custody and built around it a great primal. For four hundred years, Walsingham was the great pilgrimage center of England: he rivals Canterbury and Santiago de Compostela. The kings of England - Henry III, Edward I, Edward II, Henry VIII and his first wife Catherine of Aragon - came to him on a barefoot pilgrimage in a sign of humility.
The destruction of 1538
In 1534, Henry VIII broke up with Rome by refusing Pope Clement VII to annul his marriage to Catherine of Aragon. Four years later, in 1538, the king's commissars arrived in Walsingham to suppress the primal Augustina and destroy the sanctuary. The image of the Virgin - venerated for almost five centuries - was moved to London and publicly burned in Chelsea along with other sacred images from all over England.
Only one chapel of the pilgrims' path survived: the Slipper Chapel - "Shoe chapel" - from the 14th century, where the pilgrims barefoot before the last stretch to the sanctuary. For three centuries he served as a barn and a stable.
The restoration of the 20th century
En 1897, la capilla fue adquirida por católicos ingleses y restaurada. En 1934, los obispos católicos de Inglaterra la declararon Santuario Nacional de Nuestra Señora de Walsingham, y se reanudaron las peregrinaciones. El 15 de agosto de 1954, el Delegado Apostólico en el Reino Unido, el arzobispo O’Hara, coronó solemnemente la nueva imagen de la Virgen de Walsingham. Juan Pablo II visitó el santuario en 1982 durante su viaje a Gran Bretaña.
Today Walsingham houses two parallel shrines - the Catholic and the Anglican - and receives hundreds of thousands of pilgrims a year, on one of the few pilgrimages that Catholics and Anglicans share in the same place. The English people continue to regard Our Lady of Walsingham as the Patron of England.
"Virgin of Walsingham, who you survived the flames and returned to your home,
Teach us to persevere in faith when everything seems lost. "