The Diocese of Jaén in Spain has inaugurated the Jubilee Year marking the 800th anniversary of the apparition of the Virgin of La Cabeza in Andújar, in the Sierra Morena. The jubilee will extend until December 8, 2027.The opening ceremony was presided over by the Archbishop of Granada, Msgr. José María Gil Tamayo, and concelebrated by the Bishop of Jaén, Msgr. Sebastián Chico, and emeritus bishops Msgr. Ramón del Hoyo and Msgr. Amadeo Rodríguez Magro.
In his homily, the Archbishop reminded the faithful that the Lord expects fruits of apostolic life from every Christian, stressing that God has infinite knowledge of each person. He said the Christian life is a path on which each person arrives with their problems, worries and difficulties and is called to place them in the hands of the Virgin, knowing that Christ is both the way and the goal.The devotion to the Virgin of La Cabeza traces its origin to August 12, 1227, when a shepherd named Juan Alonso de Rivas reportedly found a carving of the Mother of God between two rocks while tending his sheep in the Sierra Morena.
According to tradition, the shepherd knelt and the Virgin asked him to deliver the message that she wished a shrine to be built on that spot. When he hesitated, fearing no one would believe him, the Virgin healed his paralyzed arm as a sign.Devotion to the Virgin grew steadily in the area, and a sanctuary was built over the centuries, finally completed in the early 17th century.
In 1680, the Mother Confraternity of the Virgin of Cabeza became the first in the diocese to make a public vow in defence of the Immaculate Conception.During the 19th century, devotion declined due to the War of Independence against the French and the expropriation of Church property promoted by liberal governments. At the beginning of the 20th century, the access road to the sanctuary was transformed into a highway.
The Virgin received canonical coronation in 1909 by a bull of St. Pius X, who also named her patron saint of Andújar. In 1926, King Alfonso XIII visited the sanctuary.A decade later, during the Spanish Civil War, the site endured a long siege between August 1936 and May 1937, while around a thousand elderly people, women and children sought refuge there alongside some 350 combatants.After the war ended, pilgrimages resumed from 1940 onwards at the sanctuary, which had to be almost completely rebuilt.