Nuestra Señora Aparecida De Brasil

All photos this page: Catedrales e Iglesias/Cathedrals and Churches, Attribution 2.0 Generic (CC BY 2.0)

Nuestra Señora Aparecida De Brasil is a fantastic modernist church in the Colonia Jardín Balbuena. The massive structure stands at the beginning of the iconic Lorenzo Boturini street, facing the giant Kennedy housing complex. The Kennedy complex separates this part of the  Jardín Balbuena (II) from the from the much larger neighborhood (III) directly to the east.

The church was built in the late 1950s by architect Jorge Molina Montes. A student of Félix Candela, he’d shortly before completed the beloved La Lomita Sanctuary in Sinaloa. Here he put Candela’s signature hyperbolic paraboloids to good use. This was before much of the area was developed and even before Kennedy’s 1962 visit to the Unidad Independencia. His assassination explains the addition of his name to the 1964 housing development just across the way.

Molina Montes magnificent church is graced by stained glass windows designed by Fray Gabriel Chávez de la Mora, He was both an architect and Benedictine brother who was active in the church’s final design.

The church is dedicated to Our Lady of Aparecida. The title is associated with the Immaculate Conception but began with a group of Brazilian fisherman who discovered a clay statue in their fishing nets in Aparecida, outside of São Paulo, Brazil. The statue appeared in the nets in 1717, and this incarnation of the Virgin Mary became the patron saint of Brazil in 1929.

The church of Nuestra Señora Aparecida De Brasil celebrated its first mass in 1959. A serious fire consumed much of the church in 2020. Lovingly restored, today it looks out over much of the surrounding neighborhood and the legendary Kennedy houses. The street out front is named for the important historian and Nahuatl scholar, Francisco de Borja del Paso y Troncoso (1842–1916). His work paved the way for much of the later reconstruction of historical accounts of the Spanish conquest and indigenous life before and after the Spanish invasion.

The church is roughly a ten-minute walk from the Venustiano Carranza Esplanade and the Centro Cultural Carranza.