On September 8, 1961, a Cuban man named Luis "Guajiro" Gutiérrez stepped off a plane in Miami carrying a blue suitcase. Inside, wrapped for safekeeping, was a sixteen-inch wooden statuette of the Virgin and Child — a replica of the image that had floated on the Bay of Nipe in 1612 and that Pope Benedict XV had proclaimed Patroness of Cuba. That night the statue presided over a Mass before thirty thousand Cuban exiles at Miami Stadium. None of them could return to the island they had left. The image had come to them instead.
The exile community did not let the matter rest with a single night. Five years later, on the same September date, Bishop Coleman F. Carroll of Miami stood in the stadium and asked the faithful to build the Virgin a home. The diocese gave land on the shore of Biscayne Bay, between Mercy Hospital and Vizcaya. A Cuban priest, Father Agustín Román, took charge of the construction and became its living memory — carrying heavy sacks of small coins to the bank, the pennies of the poor, until the walls rose. The people called it la Ermita — the hermitage — and the name stayed.
What stands on the bay today is a church shaped like a mantle. Ninety feet high and eighty wide, its conical roof spreads above six columns that stand for the six provinces of old Cuba, and the building is turned to face the island across the water. Behind the altar rises a mural of Cuban history painted by Teok Carrasco, a native of Nipe. Under the altar lies a stone cast from earth and sand gathered across Cuba and mixed with water from a raft on which fifteen people drowned trying to flee. The replica sits at the centre, a Cuban flag pinned to her mantle. The faithful call her Cachita.
📜 History & Spiritual Significance
The devotion begins in Cuba, in 1612, when two indigenous brothers and an African boy — remembered as Los Tres Juanes, the Three Juans — were gathering salt on the Bay of Nipe when a storm broke. As the water calmed they saw a small wooden image of the Virgin holding the Child and a cross, floating on a board. It bore the inscription "I am the Virgin of Charity." They carried it to the village of El Cobre, near Santiago, where it repeatedly disappeared and returned to its place until a sanctuary was built to keep it. A letter dictated in 1687 by one of the finders, then an old man, is the earliest surviving testimony.
Pope Benedict XV declared Our Lady of Charity Patroness of Cuba in 1916. The original image was crowned during the Eucharistic Congress in Santiago in 1936, and Pope Paul VI raised the El Cobre sanctuary to a basilica in 1977. In 1998 Pope John Paul II, visiting Cuba, crowned the image as queen and patron of the Cuban people.
The Miami chapter opened on the feast day itself, September 8, 1961. A replica of the El Cobre image, taken from the parish of Guanabo in Havana, was smuggled out of Cuba through the Panamanian embassy and carried to Miami by Luis "Guajiro" Gutiérrez in a blue suitcase. That evening thirty thousand Cuban exiles gathered at Miami Stadium — the Bobby Maduro stadium — for a Mass before the image.
On September 8, 1966 — the fiftieth anniversary of the patroness proclamation — Bishop Coleman F. Carroll used his homily at the stadium Mass to call on the exile community to build the Virgin a shrine. The Diocese of Miami donated a waterfront lot on Biscayne Bay. Father Agustín Aleido Román, a Cuban priest expelled by the Castro regime in 1961 who had spent four years as a missionary in Chile before reaching Miami, was appointed to lead the work. Georgina and Tarcisio Nieto organized the Cofradía, the Confraternity of Our Lady of Charity, that would coordinate the faithful.
The cornerstone of a provisional chapel was laid on May 20, 1967. Fundraising ran for six years, largely in small coins — con los quilos de los pobres, with the pennies of the poor — and Father Román became known for bringing sacks of coin to the bank. The permanent structure was dedicated on December 2, 1973, in a Mass celebrated by Cardinal John Krol of Philadelphia, then president of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, with Archbishop Carroll and the exiled Cuban bishop Eduardo Boza Masvidal concelebrating. The mural by Teok Carrasco, a native of Nipe, was inaugurated on September 8, 1977.
When Pope John Paul II visited Miami in September 1987, the image was brought to the residence of Archbishop Edward McCarthy to preside over the Holy Father's private chapel, and he spoke of Our Lady of Charity in his homily. On May 14, 1994, Archbishop McCarthy consecrated the altar. The cornerstone beneath it holds soil, stone, and sand from the provinces of Cuba, cast with water brought from a refugee raft on which fifteen people perished fleeing the island.
In 2000 the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops declared the Ermita a National Shrine, satisfying the canonical requirement that a national shrine carry the approval of the episcopal conference. Father Román, who had been ordained an auxiliary bishop of Miami in 1979 — the first Cuban to become a bishop in the United States — served as rector until his retirement in 2003 and died on April 11, 2012. The shrine he built carries the exile community's memory in its foundations and in the image at its centre.
☩ Pilgrimage Sites in Miami
National Shrine of Our Lady of Charity
Santuario Nacional de Nuestra Señora de la Caridad (Ermita de la Caridad)
The shrine stands on the shore of Biscayne Bay, south of downtown Miami, a conical church ninety feet high and eighty wide whose spreading roof echoes the mantle of the Virgin. Six columns around the building represent the six traditional provinces of Cuba — Pinar del Río, La Habana, Matanzas, Las Villas, Camagüey, and Oriente — and the church is oriented to face the island across the water. Inside the entrance a tiled image of Our Lady greets visitors. At the centre, on the altar, sits the replica statuette smuggled from Havana in 1961, a Cuban flag pinned to her mantle. Behind the altar rises the mural by Teok Carrasco, tracing Cuban history from Columbus's arrival to a family's flight by sea, with the Virgin of Charity and Christ at its heart. Beneath the altar lies the cornerstone holding earth and sand from across Cuba, cast with water from a refugee raft. Against the north wall, a stone image of Our Lady receives the yellow sunflowers devotees bring; on the grounds stand an abstract sculpture of the Virgin, a life-size statue of founder Bishop Agustín Román gazing toward the bay, and the Kiosko Los Tres Juanes canteen.
🕯️ Annual Feast Days & Celebrations
Feast of Our Lady of Charity — September 8
The principal gathering of the year falls on September 8, the Nativity of the Blessed Virgin Mary, kept by Cuban tradition as the feast of Our Lady of Charity, Patroness of Cuba. The shrine holds the celebration on the calendar date regardless of the weekday. The day follows a fixed shape: veneration of the image through the daylight hours, the rosary at six in the evening, a procession of the image around the shrine grounds at seven, and a solemn Mass at eight, normally celebrated outdoors on the campus by Biscayne Bay and presided over by the Archbishop of Miami. The feast opens a season of preparation through late August — a novena, parish peregrinations of the image through Miami-Dade and Broward counties, a fundraising marathon on radio and television, and a Marian evening of music and reflection in the days before. Devotees bring bright yellow sunflowers and candles, the colour of Our Lady of Charity, and lay them around the outdoor image.
🛏️ Where to Stay
Hampton Inn by Hilton Coconut Grove / Coral Gables (hotel) — The closest practical base, in Coconut Grove across from the Metrorail station, with complimentary parking and breakfast. About 2.8 km from the shrine. Website ∙ Reserve this hotel
Arya Hotel & Suites Coconut Grove, WorldHotels Distinctive ⭐⭐⭐⭐ (hotel) — A full-service mid-upscale hotel on the Coconut Grove bayfront with a rooftop pool and bay views, about 3.3 km from the shrine. Website ∙ Reserve this hotel
Mr. C Miami – Coconut Grove ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ (hotel) — A Cipriani-family luxury hotel on the Coconut Grove bayfront, with a rooftop pool overlooking Biscayne Bay and the Bellini restaurant on site, about 3.4 km from the shrine. Website
🚗 Getting There
By Air: Miami International Airport (MIA) is approximately 10 km west of the shrine.
By Car: The shrine sits on South Miami Avenue on the Biscayne Bay waterfront, south of downtown Miami, between Mercy Hospital and Vizcaya. Parking is available on the shrine grounds.
By Public Transport: Miami's Metrorail serves the area; the Coconut Grove station lies about 3 km away in Coconut Grove.
📚 Further Reading
Books:
Thomas A. Tweed. Our Lady of the Exile: Diasporic Religion at a Cuban Catholic Shrine in Miami — The scholarly monograph on this shrine: a historical and ethnographic study of the Ermita de la Caridad as the centre of the Cuban exile community's religious life. (Oxford, 2002)
Maria Morera Johnson. Our Lady of Charity: How a Cuban Devotion to Mary Helped Me Grow in Faith and Love — An accessible devotional memoir by a Cuban-American Catholic on the patroness of Cuba, the 1612 apparition, and the devotion's meaning for the exile community. (Ave Maria Press, 2019)
🎥 Recommended Videos
Restoring Hope Campaign — The shrine's own channel on its restoration and mission. (Ermita de la Caridad Miami, 3 min)
Miami Proud: "La Ermita de la Caridad" — A CBS Miami feature on the shrine as a place of worship and pilgrimage. (3 min)
Ermita de la Caridad, National Shrine of Our Lady of Charity — A walkthrough of the shrine grounds and interior. (Martin Adventures, 12 min)
🔗 Useful Links
National Shrine of Our Lady of Charity — The shrine's official website.
Archdiocese of Miami — Diocesan information and the feature article on the shrine.
🧭 Nearby Pilgrimage Destinations
St. Augustine (476 km north-northwest) — America's oldest Catholic pilgrimage site, the National Shrine of Our Lady of La Leche at Mission Nombre de Dios, founded 1565.
🪶 Closing Reflection
"In this shrine, which keeps alive the memory of God's holy and faithful pilgrim people in Cuba, Mary is venerated as the Mother of Charity. From here she protects our roots, our identity, so that we may never stray to paths of despair."
— Pope Francis, Homily at the Shrine of Our Lady of Charity, El Cobre, 22 September 2015
