Federico Stories

In 1655, some mighty pirates living on Meanguera Island attacked a ship and stole a sealed wooden box whose contents. The pirates didn’t care about its destination since they were only looking for gold and silver. They forced the sailors to walk the plank and let them die around 50 miles from the shores of La Paz in El Salvador. However, God didn’t forget what had happened and sent a powerful wind that almost destroy the pirate ship. From one moment to another, the mysterious box fell into the sea and the pirates couldn’t recover it. In 1682, some merchants around the shores of La Paz discovered the mysterious box. They couldn’t open it and asked a man on the shores to lend them one of his donkeys. They walked next to the donkey for several days until they reached San Miguel on November 21 st . As soon as they had arrived in San Miguel, the donkey felt exhausted in the main square in front of the old parish church. Immediately, the box opened and after removing several wraps, they foun...

Long ago, three fishermen woke up and decided to hunt some fish on the shores of El Espino Beach. Everyone was happy and seemed like it would be a good day. After a while, one of them started to yell, “Come here! I found a portrait.” The other two men came to see it and were shocked by the portrait. They were sure it was the Virgin Mary. All of them kneeled on the sand and thanked her for her visit. Especially because they were humble men. The men picked up the portrait carefully and brought it to the closes Catholic Church where the local priest deduced that it was the Virgin of Candelaria. The priest spoke with some local people, and everyone agreed to bring the portrait to a tiny old hermitage in the Old Town. Also, they agreed to create a statue that resembled her to her perfection (figure 1). From that day, the Virgin of Candelaria became their Patron and yearly Pilgrimage Festivities are organized on February 1 st and 2 nd as a memory of her visit. Figure 1. The Virgin of C...

Some elders from Dolores say that many moons ago, some people found a Virgin of Dolores’s statue (figure 1) in the Plains of San Cristóbal next to the banks of the Sisicua River. Where they found it, the people called this town, Puebla Nueva of Titihuapa or La Puebla Nueva. They considered this statue, a miracle, and a message from God. That’s why they built a small temple to honor her presence. Figure 1. The Virgin of Dolores.  ¹ Years later, the priest of the town those days requested the inhabitants to move the statue from La Puebla because he said that the Virgin didn’t like where she was.  This suggestion motivated the town to move the statue from the banks of the river to the place it occupies from 1781 to today,  Our Lady of Sorrows Parish . However, there is a second version and the most accepted one, especially by the Catholic Church. Some people accidentally found a statue of the Virgin of Dolores. They discovered it not so far from the current lo...

For almost a century, the Izalco Volcano erupted continuously. There was a constant fear that it would erupt and descend on the skirts wrecking the villages around it. The parish priest of the church of Dolores in 1935, Salvador Castillo, gathered a group of parishioners and undertook with the image of the Immaculate Conception aloft. They organized a procession around. Suddenly, the volcano calmed down, and the lava and smoke did not come out anymore. This moment was considered a miracle of an unprecedented scale by everyone, and on that day, December 10th, 1935, they placed a statue of the Virgin (figure 1) right where the lava altered its course and stopped. Plus, yearly on the same day, many Izalqueños travel a long way, in the morning to the skirts of the silent Izalco Volcano. Later, they join a mass in honor of their Holy Mother for multiple reasons, including faith, and gratefulness to the Virgin for stopping the lava, among others. All these actions continue, even though...