Statue of Our Lady of Miracles, Bainguinim

The statue of Our Lady of Miracles of Jaffna Patão is a wooden figure of the Virgin Mary holding the infant Jesus, which is kept today in the Church of São Pedro at Bainguinim, Goa.

Its story begins in 1614 in Jaffna, in Ceylon, where Friar Francisco de S. Antonio, rector of the church of Our Lady of Victory, asked a local sculptor, Annacutti, to carve an altar statue from wood brought from Cochin. While the work was still in progress, people came to his house to pray before it, and many reported being cured, even those who simply held its wood shavings. Awed and afraid, Annacutti stopped work and begged the friar to remove the figure, still incomplete. On 24 July 1614 it was carried in procession past the royal palaces, watched by the king and his family, to the church. Known as Puthumai Matha, it drew pilgrims from across Ceylon and from Santhome and Nagapattinam.