Our Lady of the Pillar

**Our Lady of the Pillar** (*Nuestra Señora del Pilar*) is one of the most ancient and revered Marian titles in Christianity, commemorating the tradition that the Virgin Mary, while still living in Jerusalem, appeared to St. James the Apostle in Zaragoza, Spain around AD 40. According to pious tradition, Mary came to encourage James in his difficult missionary work in Hispania, leaving behind a small wooden statue of herself atop a jasper pillar as a sign of her visit. This is considered the only apparition of Mary to have occurred before her Assumption into Heaven. The devotion to Our Lady of the Pillar has been central to Spanish Catholic identity for nearly two millennia. Pope Calixtus III encouraged pilgrimage to the shrine in 1456, and Pope Innocent XIII mandated her veneration throughout the Spanish Empire in 1730. The image was crowned with papal coronation by Pope St. Pius X in 1905. Our Lady of the Pillar is the Patroness of Spain, the Hispanic World, and the Spanish Civil Guard. Her feast day on October 12 coincides with the National Day of Spain (*Día de la Hispanidad*) and the anniversary of Columbus's arrival in the Americas. Pope St. John Paul II, who visited the Basilica of Our Lady of the Pillar twice during his pontificate (1982 and 1984), praised her as "Mother of the Hispanic Peoples."