Mary Who Will Welcome Pope Leo Might Have Her Most Interesting Title

The Blessed Virgin is Patroness of many countries, but I'll grant tht Her title as Patroness of Uruguay is certainly unique!

From Aleteia

By Daniel Esparza

When Pope Leo XIV visits the city of Florida, Uruguay, in November, he will pray before a 400-year-old statue that watched over the birth of a nation.

Pope Leo XIV will visit Uruguay from November 6 to 8 — his first trip to Latin America as pontiff, and the first papal visit to the country since John Paul II went in 1988. His itinerary includes three cities: Montevideo, Paysandú, and Florida. That last stop carries a weight that non-Uruguayans will not recognize. Florida — a quiet city of around 35,000 people in the geographic heart of the country — is home to the Cathedral Basilica of Nuestra Señora de los Treinta y Tres, where the patroness of Uruguay has been venerated for nearly four centuries. Her name — Our Lady of the Thirty-Three — tells a story that belongs equally to faith and to national history.

The image itself is small: a wooden statue barely 16 inches tall, carved in the early 17th century and brought to the Río de la Plata region by Franciscan missionaries. It was originally venerated in the town of Las Víboras, on the eastern bank of the Uruguay River, where it quickly became the center of a thriving popular devotion among both indigenous communities and Spanish settlers. Miracles were reported, and so pilgrims came. The statue acquired the reputation that small Marian images in the Americas so often acquire: a presence more powerful than its humble form suggests.

The name “Thirty-Three” arrived two centuries later. On April 19, 1825, thirty-three Uruguayan patriots — the Treinta y Tres Orientales — crossed the Uruguay River under the command of Juan Antonio Lavalleja, launching the campaign that would eventually lead to independence from Brazil. Before embarking, the men commended their mission to the Virgin. Their crossing succeeded, independence eventually followed, and the small wooden statue became, in the national memory, the Madonna who had watched over the birth of a country.

Pope Pius IX formally declared her patroness of Uruguay in 1857, a recognition confirmed by successive popes. The image was eventually moved to Florida, where the cathedral bearing her title houses her today. A city to the east of the country took her name — Treinta y Tres — as a permanent reminder. Her feast day is November 21, the Presentation of the Blessed Virgin Mary — just days after Leo XIV’s visit.

Uruguay is the most secular country in the continent, with the lowest percentage of Catholics in Latin America — only 36% of the population — a figure that makes the depth of popular devotion to Our Lady of the Thirty-Three all the more striking. She is venerated not only by the faithful but by Uruguayans of various backgrounds as a symbol of national identity: of a moment when 33 men trusted their lives and their cause to something larger than themselves.