The Diocese of Ocaña (Colombia) began on August 7 the novena in honor of Our Lady of Touroma, a venerated Marian invocation since 1711 and known with love as “La Morenita”.
The celebration will culminate on August 16 with a solemn procession and mass chaired by Cardinal Luis José Ruedio Aparicio, Primado de Colombia, in the Cathedral of Santa Ana.
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Fr. Enrique Ríos Pallares, spiritual director of the Major Good Shepherd in Ocaña, recalled, in a VIDEOMSAGE PUBLISHED BY THE COLOMBIAN EPISCOPAL CONFERENCE (CEC)that the brunette “appeared to humble peasants who, in her desire to go to cut a tree to make a work tool, feel that the Mother of God, a light, shone in that tree and since then they saw their image embodied.”
Since then, she said, “she has favored Ocaña and the province of so many attacks and dangers … He continues to accompany us, interceding for families, many miracles of sick people, evicted, come pilgrims from all over Colombia.”
The priest explained that during the novena, the image comes out in procession from the Torcoroma chapel to the Cathedral of Santa Ana, “the mother of all the churches of the diocese.” There it remains for the central celebration of August 16, when “the great procession will be held throughout the tour from where she came to get here.”
From that place, the Colombian faithful ask him to “intercede for the peace of these areas of Ocaña and Catatumbo so whipped by violence, that she protects us, that so much extortion ceases, both kidnapping, so much death,” adds the presbyter.
For Janitza Rueda, a member of the Catholic charismatic renewal of Ocaña, participating in this beginning of the ninth is “a very great joy, a very immense joy to be able to venerate our Blessed Mother in this beautiful invocation.”
Franklin Rueda, a member of the Brotherhood of the Lord, said that the Virgin of Torcoroma “is the patron saint of us the ocañeros, which we venerate and applaud and want so much.”
He recalled that his group was enshrined in 2017, and that every time they gather “we pray throughout our group, for all the intentions of Colombia, for the peace of the world, for our Pope León, for our Bishop Orlando Olave and the entire ministerial body that makes up the diocese of Ocaña”.
Beyond Ocaña, devotion to the “brunette” has spread to various Colombian cities such as Cúcuta, Barranquilla and Bogotá, where there are temples dedicated to this invocation, which is considered a sign of faith, identity and unity for the whole country.
Diego López Marina
I was born in 1991. I have a degree in Communication Sciences. Since 2015 I work as a digital journalist. I started my career in the newspaper El Comercio in Peru. In 2016, I began as editor in ACI Press and I perform as a web editor since 2018. From 2024, I write the Newsletter for Social Media. I specialize in Catholic news focused on the defense of life and family, international politics, technology, popular culture and the Vatican.