Last year I wrote several pieces on Santa Fe.  For anyone who missed it but has an interest, you can go to the bottom of my home page and type “Santa Fe” in the search bar to pull up the archives and read it.  In that particular one I wrote about some of my favorite churches in the city proper.  To my surprise and delight I discovered a new church on this trip.  We were not able to go inside and see the Sanctuario, but I did get this beautiful picture of the Shrine of Our Lady of Guadalupe, the twelve-foot statue you see here in front of it.  The original church was a small structure established in 1777 on the banks of the Santa Fe River near the end of the Camino Real.  It was constructed with a Latin cross floor plan, three foot thick adobe walls, a flat roof supported by pine vigas, a dirt packed floor, and a three-tiered bell tower.  There is the historic chapel as well as a new larger church built to accommodate the burgeoning parish.  We got to walk the El Cerro de Tepeyac, a paved path featuring six tile mosaics illustrating the apparitions of Our Lady of Guadalupe to Juan Diego.  Santa Fe has the oldest standing shrine built in honor of Our Lady of Guadalupe in the United States.  It is a beautiful and enduring landmark and I thought it was so fitting that I had never seen it until I had been graced with my own Marian child.  When the Archbishop dedicated the statue he stated that “if the Cathedral Basilica of Saint Francis is the heart of Santa Fe then the Shrine of Our Lady of Guadalupe is the soul of Santa Fe.”  Here the Ever Blessed Virgin Mother Mary is always waiting to hear the prayers of her pilgrims, the greatest intercessor for Her Son, Our Lord, Jesus Christ.  Maris Grace and I were especially blessed on this, her first trip to Santa Fe; the city of holy faith.