Our Lady of Monserrat Roman Catholic Church, Tortuga, Trinidad.

Our Lady of Monserrat Roman Catholic Church, Tortuga, Trinidad.
Our Lady of Monserrat Roman Catholic Church, Tortuga, Trinidad. Also called the The Tortuga Roman Catholic Church, it is one of the oldest and picturesque churches in Trinidad and Tobago and is the only church named after Our Lady of Montserrat in the English-speaking Caribbean. This spacious church, with ka seating capacity of 300 has three altars, a High Altar and two side altars. The architecture is a combination of Gothic, French and Spanish in its origin. The church was built by priest and architect Fr Marie Jules Dupoux in 1878 and blessed on December 24th 1878. It was named after the Montserrat Hills on which it stands. This Church houses a Shrine to Our Lady of Montserrat also known as the Black Virgin. To the Spanish settlers, the landscape of Tortuga and its environs were geographically reminiscent of the Montserrat region of Catalonia, north east Spain, where the famous shrine of Our Lady of Montserrat is located. The church in Tortuga was named after this Spanish shrine, where, the tradition states that over 1200 years ago a statue of Our Lady was found. (http://ourladyofmontserrat.org/aboutus.htm).