Cathedral Basilica of Esquipulas

The statue of the Black Christ (El Cristo Negro) was commissioned by Spanish conquistadors and carved in 1594 by Quirio Cataño in Antigua and installed in the church in 1595.

The history of the Basilica begins in 1735, when a priest named Father Pedro Pardo de Figueroa experienced a miraculous cure after praying before the statue.

On a visit in 1840, the anthropologist John Lloyd Stephens described the church as the town's "only object of interest".

[1] The church was promoted to cathedral status by pope Pius XII in 1956 as the seat of the new Territorial Prelature of Santo Cristo de Esquípulas, whose first prelate Mariano Rossell y Arellano (the senior archbishop of Guatemala) sought to set up a Benedictine monastery attached to the cathedral to care for it - this was founded in 1959 by three monks sent from St. Joseph Benedictine Abbey in Louisiana.

He also successfully petitioned pope John XXIII to promote the church to minor basilica status in 1961.