Top of the World
The origin of the Basilica of the Holy Spirit begins when immigrants arrived at the end of the 19th century promoted the creation of a chapel dedicated to the Virgin of Guadalupe, patron saint of Mexico and the Philippines and considered the “empress of America. In 1890 a family named Figueroa built a chapel in honor of Guadalupe.
In the absence of a see, Monsignor Aneiros offered them in 1894, to the Congregation of the Divine Word , (founded today by Saint Arnold Janssen on September 8, 1875 in Steyl, a small town in Holland, near the border with Germany) who was in the country since 1889, the chapel to serve as their headquarters.
There, the vice-parish of Gral. Las Heras (the name of the parish as a civil jurisdiction) began to function on November 1, 1896. In just a few years, the chapel was already small for the neighborhood. That is why they decided to build the new temple.
The fundamental stone (it is behind the main altar) was placed in 1901 and inaugurated in 1907, by order of the founder of the Congregation, the new temple would be dedicated to the Holy Spirit.
It was declared a basilica on October 30, 1940 by Pope Pius XII, "because of its beauty and spaciousness." The image of the Virgin was brought from Mexico.
The Basilica of the Holy Spirit impacts outside where the two towers that measure 54 meters high stand out. With a slight Gothic tendency exposed at that height, in each of them there is an imposing clock, whose machine is of German origin. The carillon has three bells. Above the clocks are the steeples proper containing five cast bells in the town of Bochum, also in Germany.
