Pilgrimage Sites in Senegal

Senegal, a Muslim-majority country on the West African coast, holds its national Marian pilgrimage at Popenguine — a fishing village on the Petite-Côte, about 70 km south of Dakar, where the Sanctuary of Our Lady of Deliverance (Sanctuaire Notre-Dame-de-la-Délivrande) draws the country's Catholics each Whit Monday.

The shrine was founded in 1888 by French Spiritan missionaries. The Alsatian Spiritan missionary Joseph Strub had settled in the village as early as 1857, running a dispensary and drawing the first conversions; Bishop Mathurin Picarda, a Breton Spiritan, then chose the clifftop site in 1887 and installed a replica of the Black Madonna of the Norman shrine of Notre-Dame-de-la-Délivrande near Bayeux. The founding belonged to the late-colonial missionary enterprise of the Apostolic Vicariate of Senegambia, and the first pilgrimage in 1888 was marked by the baptism of young Serer converts.

Catholics are a small minority in Senegal — around 5% of the population, the rest overwhelmingly Muslim. The Whit Monday pilgrimage has a long tradition of Muslim neighbours taking part and helping to organise it, a coexistence the village and the country frame as a model of interreligious dialogue. Read the full Popenguine guide.