La Chiquinquirá Church (Spanish; Castilian: Virgen de La Chiquinquirá) is a church in Maracaibo, Venezuela.[1] The feast day of the church is November 18. Annually on this day many thousands of people gather around the church. It is a colonial church that was built between 1686 and completed in 1858.
The basilica enshrines a colonial image made in 1709, colonial replica of the famed earliest painting of Our Lady of Chiquinquirá in which this church is dedicated to. Pope Benedict XV authorized the canonical coronation of the image by decree granted to the Bishop of Zulia, Arturo Celestino Álvarez on 16 July 1917. The coronation ceremony would not be carried out until 18 November 1942, 25 years after its approval.[2]