Francisco Morales Crisóstomo, neighbor; Ana Carmen Morales, president of the Villa de Arico Neighborhood Association, and Juan José Armas, councilor for Fiestas at the time, decided to meet with Benito Lagos, a priest of the Congregation of the Incarnate Word (now deceased), to ask him need to revitalize devotion to the Virgin of Abona. The original idea was to convene a pilgrimage of the patron saint of the region through Arico, Granadilla and San Miguel. The opposition of the priest from Granada prevented it. “We want the pilgrimage to Abona to be possible 16 years later.” Since 2006, the image travels through Arico every five years.
Juan José Armas tells that «For a year we were preparing the first, holding meetings, many, in the house of Francisco Morales -who designed the route that is still in force-, convincing the neighborhood associations and the bishop, Bernardo Álvarez, who authorized us on the condition that it not be a pilgrimage, but a more religious act». The initial design “has been maintained: in each town a mass, a meal and a festive meeting.”
maintain interest
Juan José Armas acknowledges his fear that after the success of the first pilgrimage the interest of the people would decline, “but it has grown and this year is the best exponent.” Hence, he feels “proud to have gotten involved and to be the councilor who involved the municipal government.”
Now, the effort is to achieve the initial objective: the regional pilgrimage. «We work so that, on the occasion of the 300th anniversary of the apparition of the Virgin of Abona, the image is in Granadilla and San Miguel. There are many devout people in these municipalities and the meeting of the patron saints of the region in the Cueva del Santo Hermano Pedro would be important».
Armas remembers the priest Lagos, “who organized the first pilgrimage, but did not live it»; to his successor, Bernardo Juanjo, who did the following; to the businesswoman who donated the travel litter; the agreement of the place of each neighborhood in which the relief of the porters takes place; the secrecy of the organization in each nucleus, the political unanimity around the pilgrimage and «the emotion of the arrival of the image in Villa de Arico. We all cry.” Juan José Armas does not hide it: “Seeing the Virgin visiting the neighborhoods for the first time was the greatest thing she could achieve or collaborate in doing.” An achievement that the neighbors recognized him by giving him, in the house of Paco Morales, «a box of picos, which only had one layer, because underneath there was a replica of the carving of the Virgin of Abona made by a sculptor in Ecuador. Stay in my house, blessed.
