There are four sanctuaries that the people of Monterrey have built in honor of their patron saint. The second was a little more solid, but small (1817).
Thirty-six years later, Pope Pius IX laid the first stone of the third Shrine of Our Lady of the Oak, being completely finished in 1900; However, due to an earthquake the temple was materially destroyed. It was on June 26, 1910, when the restoration was carried out. The architect D. Lisandro Peña, who, inspired by the Roman basilicas, managed to build the modern expression with traditional models and conceived the new building in three main parts: portico, central naves and the bell tower.
The legend of the appearance of Nuestra Señora del Roble indicates that Fray Andrés de León in 1592 placed an image of the Virgin in the hollow of an oak tree to protect it from the incursions of the natives and savages. Some time after “the founding of the city of Monterrey, a shepherd who took care of the goats of the small herd heard that they called her from an oak. Admired by the call, she approached the place where the voices came from full of curiosity: What was her surprise, when she found in the hollow of the wild oak a small image of the Blessed Virgin. The little shepherd notified her parents, who went to the place of the apparition and, when they contemplated the beauty of the image, they made the offering of their prayers ”.
The priest heals. Convinced of the appearance, he invited all the neighbors to lead the image to the parish in a procession. The next morning, when some parishioners wanted to greet the Virgin, they found that the image was not in its place but in the same hollow of the oak. The event was repeated three times, so they decided to build their temple where the tree was.
