Angola's Archbishop Urges Catholics to Live Mary's Faith as Muxima Pilgrim Image Departs Luanda

On a Monday morning in mid-August, the Archbishop of Luanda stood before his congregation at Holy Family Parish and spoke about saying yes. The Pilgrim Image of Our Lady of the Conception of Muxima—a sacred object that had spent the previous two weeks traveling through parishes across the archdiocese—was about to leave the city. Archbishop Filomeno do Nascimento Vieira Dias used the moment to ask his Catholics to consider what Mary's yes had meant, and what their own yeses might cost them.

The image had arrived in Luanda on August 1st and made its way through multiple parishes over sixteen days before concluding its tour on August 17th at Holy Family. Now it was departing for the Diocese of Viana, continuing a journey that forms part of the preparation for the annual pilgrimage to the Shrine of Our Lady of Muxima, scheduled for September 4th and 5th. The timing was deliberate. The archdiocese is planning its first walking pilgrimage to the shrine during those dates, and the traveling image serves as both spiritual preparation and practical announcement.

In his homily, Archbishop Dias presented Mary not as a distant saint but as a living model of how faith actually works in the world. He spoke of her faith as something visible—expressed through signs, gestures, and actions that revealed a life entirely surrendered to God's will. Her humility, he suggested, kept that faith from becoming self-serving or proud. She was, in his framing, the opposite of Eve. Where Eve said no to God's plan, Mary said yes, without hesitation or doubt. In that yes, Archbishop Dias told his congregation, a new humanity emerged. A new creation. A new relationship between God and human beings.

The Archbishop, who has served as a bishop in Luanda since 2004, did not present this as abstract theology. He asked Catholics to become what Mary was—people touched and renewed by grace, transformed by the Holy Spirit, nourished by the Word of God. He called them to imitate her faith, her humility, her obedience, and her service. He asked them to become, in effect, an image of the new humanity that has overcome sin and doubt. The call was both personal and communal.

During the same Mass, Archbishop Dias also prayed for the vulnerable. He asked Mary's intercession for bishops and priests, for women and men in religious life, for families and for young people discerning vocations. But he also prayed for those on the margins—people struggling with mental illness, street children, those abandoned by society. "Mother, help us to care for those who are most vulnerable in our society," he said. The prayer suggested that living Mary's faith meant not just internal conviction but concrete action toward those who suffer.

The Shrine of Our Lady of Muxima itself sits about 130 kilometers from Luanda, on the banks of the Kwanza River. The word Muxima means "heart" in Kimbundu, the local language, and the shrine has become Angola's most popular pilgrimage destination, drawing devotees from across the country and beyond. The Portuguese built a fortress and church there in 1589, and devotion to Our Lady of Muxima has persisted across centuries. When the Diocese of Viana was created in 2007, it marked a new chapter in the shrine's history. Now, as the pilgrim image moves through parishes ahead of September, it carries with it centuries of faith and the Archbishop's challenge to his people: to say yes as Mary did, to surrender as she surrendered, and to serve as she served.