The Immaculate Conception Cathedral ( es, Catedral de la Inmaculada Concepción) also called Iquique Cathedral It is a cathedral church of Catholic worship, home of the Roman Catholic Diocese of

Iquique Iquique () is a port city and commune in northern Chile, capital of both the Iquique Province and Tarapacá Region. It lies on the Pacific coast, west of the Pampa del Tamarugal, which is part of the Atacama Desert. It has a population of 191,468 ...

in the northern part of the South American country of

Chile Chile, officially the Republic of Chile, is a country in the western part of South America. It is the southernmost country in the world, and the closest to Antarctica, occupying a long and narrow strip of land between the Andes to the east a ...

. It was consecrated in 1882 under the patronage of the

Immaculate Conception of Mary The Immaculate Conception is the belief that the Virgin Mary was free of original sin from the moment of her conception. It is one of the four Marian dogmas of the Catholic Church, meaning that it is held to be a divinely revealed truth w ...

. It was built thanks to the fund campaign initiated by the Apostolic Vicar Camilo Ortuzar, after the parish church of Iquique was destroyed by fire on May 10, 1833. In May 1884 the remains of

Arturo Prat Agustín Arturo Prat Chacón (; April 3, 1848 – May 21, 1879) was a Chilean lawyer and navy officer. He was killed in the Battle of Iquique, during the War of the Pacific. During his career, Prat had taken part in several naval engagements, ...

and others who fell in the

naval Battle of Iquique The Battle of Iquique was a naval engagement that occurred between a Chilean corvette under the command of Arturo Prat Chacón and a Peruvian ironclad under Miguel Grau Seminario on 21 May 1879, during the naval stage of the War of the Pacif ...

were transferred to the temple, where they remained until moved to Valparaiso in 1888, and in 1885 its construction was completed. In 1929, due to the creation of the Diocese of Iquique, the church acquired the rank of Cathedral. In 1989 the cathedral, together with the parochial houses attached to it, was declared a historical monument (''Monumento histórico'').

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Immaculate Conception Cathedral, Church Roman Catholic cathedrals in Chile Buildings and structures in Tarapacá Region Roman Catholic churches completed in 1885 Iquique 19th-century Roman Catholic church buildings in Chile Rebuilt buildings and structures in Chile Neoclassical church buildings in Chile

See also

References