NATURE
The Santa Cruz del Voto, Patroness of Canjáyar
TRADITION
The Santa Cruz del Voto, Patroness of Canjáyar, was discovered in the wall of the baptistery of the parish church of Canjáyar on 19 April 1611. In that part of the wall had been dug, at the request of the Sacristan Juan Matias de Peralta, after a vision that had inspired him in which he watched a procession of angels carrying a cross in a procession starting from the main altar and ending, in that temple baptistry. Neighbours and authorities after the discovery of the cross (brought, almost certainly by a pilgrim from the Holy Land, and hidden to avoid desecration by Muslims in times of alpujarreñas turns), vowed to hold a procession every year in the same date, 19 April, and has done so continuously for 398 years until today.
HISTORY AND DOCUMENTATION
The Archbishop of Granada, Fray Alonso Bernardo de los Rios endorsed the relic of the Holy Cross and exposed to the worship of the faithful by Decree of 1678. In 1681 the Brotherhood of Santa Cruz was constituted to worship this sacred relic approving their Constitutions in 1683. The Senoir Archbishop successor to D. Felipe de Tueros decreed in 1738 to grant indulgences to those who worshiped.
The Senior Bishop of Almería D. Alfonso Ródenas donates and embeds this Santa Cruz del Voto in Canjáyar, the Lignum Crucis on 19 April 1958 and Pope Benedict 16th, at the request and processing the Bishop of Almeria, Adolfo González Montes, awarded in 2008 the Jubilee Year to mark the fourth centenary of the apparition of the Holy Cross, which met in 2011.
