What relationship does the Virgin Mary have with the astronauts who reached the Moon?

July 20 marks 55 years since man arrived on the Moon (1969) and few know of the special relationship that the astronauts of the Apollo XI mission had with the Mother of God, in her dedication to the Virgin of the Moon. , patron saint of the towns of Pozoblanco and Villanueva de Córdoba (Spain).

This relationship arose thanks to the great devotion that Felipe Sánchez, secretary of the Brotherhood of the Virgin of Luna of Córdoba, had for this dedication.

“My father was a simple person, an employee of a drugstore. He was not the owner. (…) His priority was the Virgin of Luna and taking the Virgin of Luna to all the places. And he worked hard for all these things,” recalled his son, Rafael Sánchez, in an interview with the Cadena COPE.

Rafael said that his father, who died in 1997, saw a clear relationship between Marian devotion and the arrival of man on the Moon. That’s why he decided to write a letter to astronauts Neil Armstrong, Edwin Aldrin and Michael Collins, “congratulating them on the feat they had achieved.”

“With great enthusiasm and with great humility, he wrote some letters and sent them to the United States ambassador in Spain asking him to send them to NASA and he attached some pictures of the Virgin of Luna,” Rafael recalled.

The letters were written at the end of July 1969 and arrived at the embassy at the beginning of August of that same year.

“The surprise is that at the end of September an envelope from NASA arrives at home containing a letter with the original signatures of astronauts Armstrong, Collins and Aldrin, thanking them for the gesture of sending them that image of the Virgin. , confirming that they have received it and at the same time they send them a signed photo and a card with their signature,” Rafael said.

These letters are preserved in the Jara Sanctuary, where the Virgin of Luna is located, in Córdoba.

Rafael also assured that those letters were “the beginning of a beautiful story”, since the exchange of correspondence continued with the following space missions and “there is evidence that until Apollo XVII the astronauts sent a signed letter to my father.”

Originally published July 19, 2020. This article was updated for republication.