Faith is a subject of endless fascination to me, and I usually avoid popular tourist spots, they just rarely touch me or interest me.  The Church of Santuario is a beautiful famous church believed to be a source of great healing, we both wanted to see this beautiful structure. The lame and the sick gather outside the church every day, and there are scores of crutches left behind, presumably after their owners are healed.

Architecturally the Church is gorgeous, inspiring and haunting.

I was put off by the gift shops and Disney-like aura surrounding the church, build around a cross found planted in the ground. They sell tins to hold the holy dirt. I don’t doubt or question anybody’s faith or testimony but my unease around healing sites and throngs of busses and shops bubbled up again.

America’s capitalist machine leaves nothing untouched.

The expensive wooden and ceramic images of Jesus being brutally and graphically nailed to the cross in the gift shops were disturbing to me, not what he is primarily about for me, and no mentions or representations of his struggles on behalf of the poor and vulnerable, all the art was about his agony.

I understand his suffering is an enormous part of Christian theology, but I never really see the Jesus I have read about so often. It is not for me to tell anybody else how to portray their religion, I just didn’t want to stay there for too long, and I hope all the stories about healing are true.

I thought the most authentic and moving thing I saw was the fence that led from the giant parking lot to the hauntingly beautiful and ornate Church. It was lined with crosses and ribbons and photos and messages to the dead. We spent a long time reading them and feeling them, it touched me much more deeply than the church itself, which surprised me. The messages were beautiful and so very real.