La Divina Pastora Feast

This feast centres around the La Divina Pastora statue (Spanish for “Holy Shepherdess”) in the southern small town of Siparia, Trinidad on the third Sunday after Easter.

Christians and Hindus travel from every corner of Trinidad and even Tobago to Siparia and stand in long lines for hours just to touch the feet of the popular statue. Citizens pour into the church to offer flowers, olive oil and candles to the statue on her feast day.

A Catholic mission was established in Siparia in the late 1750s, when Spanish Capuchin priests came to Trinidad through Venezuela; La Divina Pastora is the Capuchins’ patron. Siparia was made a Roman Catholic parish in 1906. It is believed people of Indian descent began making pilgrimages there long before, after the first indentured labourers arrived in 1845, and by the 1870s, the statue was attracting large numbers of Hindus.