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Real Madrid present trophies to Our Lady of Almudena

Patrick Hudson - The Tablet - Mon, Jun 6th 2022

The club celebrated a record-extending fourteenth European cup with a victory parade beginning at Madrid's cathedral.
Real Madrid present trophies to Our Lady of Almudena

The Champions League and La Liga trophies in front of the shrine of the Virgin of Almudena in Madrid's cathedral. Archdiocese of Madrid

Real Madrid players offered their Champions League trophy to the Virgin of Almudena during their victory parade on Sunday.

The club celebrated its fourteenth European cup and thirty-fifth title in the Spanish top flight with its traditional victory parade through the Spanish capital, starting at the Almudena Cathedral.

The team met the Archbishop of Madrid, Cardinal Carlos Osoro, who praised their achievement.

“When I was watching the match last night, I saw what it means to build a team culture,” he said. “It’s stimulating to share a journey with others, to support each other in the search for success, and to put in effort to create a network of relationships that can make your life together an experience of fraternity and a caravan of solidarity.”

He thanked the team for taking the name of Madrid to all corners of the world, comparing their fame to St Isidore the Farmer, a patron of Madrid and “a simple man with a presence on all continents”. The archdiocese is dedicating 2022 to the saint.

In a short ceremony, the squad presented its trophies before the sixteenth-century statue of Our Lady of Almudena, the patroness of the city. The club’s president, Florentino Pérez, delivered an address, saying that the victories were “based on the values that have forged our history” and dedicating “all of these successes to our club members and friends”.

The parade, followed by tens of thousands of Madridisti, continued to the city’s civic offices and to Cibeles, the central square where Marcelo Vieira, the team’s Brazilian captain, crowned the statue of the ancient goddess Cybele with a Real Madrid scarf and flag.

The celebrations concluded at the club’s Santiago Bernabeu stadium.

Real Madrid won the Champions League final on Saturday, beating Liverpool 1-0 at the Stade de France in Paris. Their European campaign featured a series of remarkable – some said miraculous – second-half comebacks, the aging squad producing late goals to defeat Paris St-Germain, Chelsea, and Manchester City.

The medieval image of the Virgin of Almudena is enshrined at the cathedral dedicated to her, which St John Paul II consecrated in 1993, more than a century after construction began.

Although the statue dates from around 1500, its traditions derive from an image said to have been carved by St Nicodemus, painted by St Luke, and gifted to the Church in Spain by its patron, St James. Stories describe the statue being walled into Madrid’s ramparts during the centuries of Moorish rule and lost, until the stones fell away when Alfonso VI of León and Castile conquered the city in the eleventh century.

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