The National Shrine of Our Lady of La Leche at Mission Nombre de Dios

The origins of Mission Nombre de Dios reach back to September 8, 1565 — the feast of the Nativity of the Blessed Virgin Mary — when Pedro Menéndez de Avilés landed with his expedition and formally claimed the land for the Spanish Crown, naming the site 'Nombre de Dios' (in the Name of God). Within hours of coming ashore, Father Francisco López de Mendoza Grajales, chaplain of the expedition, celebrated the first recorded Catholic Mass of thanksgiving on U.S. soil, near what is today identified as the Rustic Altar on the mission grounds. Father López was subsequently appointed vicar of La Florida, the first priestly office in what would become the United States. Over the following two decades, Spanish settlers and missionaries evangelized the indigenous Timucua, Mocama, and Agua Dulce peoples of the region. In 1587, during the Franciscans' first major missionization push, the formal Franciscan mission at Nombre de Dios was established under Fray Alonso de Escobedo, the first full-time resident friar. The mission served the nearby native village governed by the Timucuan cacica Doña Ana and later her daughter Doña María, and is considered the oldest mission in the continental United States that has remained in more or less its original location. A 1602 testimonial records Father Balthazar López baptizing 80 people at Nombre de Dios in 1595. Sometime in the early 17th century — with documentary evidence pointing to a chapel of the Indians referenced in 1577 and the formal establishment of the shrine in the 1620s — the Spanish settlers built a chapel at the mission and placed within it a statue of the Virgin Mary nursing the Christ Child, known as Nuestra Señora de La Leche y Buen Parto — 'Our Lady of the Milk and Happy Delivery.' The devotion, which itself has roots in 4th-century Bethlehem and was carried from Madrid by Spanish settlers and Franciscans, quickly drew Native Americans, especially Timucua, Guale, and Apalachee peoples, who saw in Mary a reflection of divine maternal care. The first formal stone-and-coquina chapel of La Leche was erected around 1677 under Florida Governor Pablo de Hita y Salazar, who also served as head of the lay confraternity that maintained the devotion. Foundations of this original shrine were rediscovered in 2011. The mission and shrine suffered two devastating blows in the early 18th century. In 1702, the colonial British and Indian forces under South Carolina's Governor James Moore burned the La Leche chapel and the surrounding mission buildings during his siege of St. Augustine. The chapel was rebuilt, again of coquina, with a tabby addition to the west. Then in 1728 British Colonel James Palmer led a raid with Yamasee and English soldiers that destroyed the Nombre de Dios macaris complex. Spanish Governor Antonio de Benavides subsequently ordered the remaining structures at the original site blown up to deny their future use to enemies. By 1759 the original Nombre de Dios site had been completely abandoned, and after the First Spanish Period ended in 1763 the surviving native residents departed for Cuba with the Spanish. The mission chapel lay largely in ruin for nearly a century and a half. In 1848, the Catholic congregation in St. Augustine petitioned the U.S. Congress for restitution of properties — including the 'Episcopal church lot' at Nombre de Dios — that had been seized after American acquisition of Florida in 1821. Twenty years later, in 1868, Bishop Augustin Verot, Apostolic Vicar of La Florida, purchased an acre of the historic site for one dollar from local farmer John McGuire. In 1875, Verot erected a small chapel dedicated to Our Lady of La Leche, mistakenly believing a missionary martyrdom had occurred there. That chapel was destroyed by a hurricane the following year. The Diocese of St. Augustine was formally erected on March 11, 1870, with Verot as its first bishop. A second reconstruction produced the present ivy-covered Historic Chapel in 1914, built of coquina as a deliberate replica of the earlier chapels, and still standing today as the heart of the devotion. In 1931, Bishop Patrick Barry established an annual diocesan pilgrimage to the shrine and formally opened the Mission Nombre de Dios grounds to the public with daily visiting hours, reviving the dormant Marian site for a new generation of pilgrims. The mission's modern profile was shaped by the 1965 quadricentennial of St. Augustine's founding. Archbishop Joseph P. Hurley laid the cornerstone for the Great Cross on September 8, 1965 — exactly 400 years after Menéndez's landing. The 208-foot stainless-steel cross, one of the tallest Christian crosses in the world, was dedicated by Archbishop Casimiro Morcillo González of Madrid during the diocesan Eucharistic Congress in October 1966. The same period saw the construction of the Prince of Peace Votive Church at the San Marco Avenue entrance — a coquina building with a prominent bow-arched roof and large stained-glass Holy Spirit panels, dedicated to prayers that God would spare the world from atomic warfare. Adjacent to it, the non-historic Nombre de Dios Museum was built to interpret the site. In 1958, the bronze Father Francisco López statue by Croatian-American sculptor Ivan Meštrović, atop a green-granite pedestal designed by Miami architect Thomas J. Madden Jr., was unveiled on the grounds before an estimated 5,000 pilgrims. In October 2012, the Holy See approved October 11 as the local feast day of Our Lady of La Leche for the Diocese of St. Augustine; Bishop Felipe J. Estévez renamed and dedicated the Prince of Peace Church as the Church of Our Lady of La Leche on that date. In 2015, the church was expanded for the 450th anniversary of St. Augustine's founding, adding 2,500 square feet including the Prince of Peace Tower, which houses the Our Lady of Fatima Prayer Room, a new sacristy, and altar. In October 2019 the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops officially designated the shrine a National Shrine. On October 10, 2021, in a delayed but historic ceremony officiated by Cardinal Carlos Osoro Sierra of Madrid as papal envoy of Pope Francis, the new image of Our Lady of La Leche received a canonical coronation at the Cathedral Basilica of St. Augustine — only the fourth such papal honor in U.S. history — and was then processed to the Historic Chapel, where it remains the focus of veneration today. The Diocese of St. Augustine was also consecrated to Our Lady of La Leche at the close of that Mass.