Iglesia La Merced

The Panama City of today is a sprawling mess, but up to about a century ago, when the United States started building the canal, it stemmed from the area known as Casco Viejo. My wife's family lived right by this colonial section (they were from San Felipe), and they attended the Church of Our Lady of Mercy, or Iglesia La Merced. My wife had her first communion in this church, and the mass in memory of her father was held there.

When I arrived in Panama long ago, Spanish colonial history was not the first thing on my mind. Only a few years ago, when my wife and I began our return travels together to Panama, did I take an interest in the history and architecture of Casco Viejo.

Iglesia La Merced first stood in the original Ciudad Panama (now Panama Viejo), and it was one of the few major buildings to survive the pirate Henry Morgan's attack of 1671. When the city relocated to a more defensible position a few years later, the facade of Iglesia La Merced was moved stone by stone to its present site.

After a trip to Panama a few years ago, I researched the history of Iglesia La Merced, and learned that it was in that church, when it stood at its original site, that the conquistador Francisco Pizarro and his men held their last communion, before departing Panama for the conquest of Peru.

When I told this to my wife, she said she never knew that, and then she went on with whatever she was doing.

From The History Of The Conquest Of Peru, by William H. Prescott (1847)


"On St. John the Evangelist's day, the banners of the company and the royal standard were consecrated in the cathedral church of Panama; a sermon was preached before the little army by Fray Juan de Vargas, one of the Dominicans selected by the government for the Peruvian mission; and mass was performed, and the sacrament administered to every soldier previous to his engaging in the crusade against the infidel. *13 Having thus solemnly invoked the blessing of Heaven on the enterprise, Pizarro and his followers went on board their vessels, which rode at anchor in the Bay of Panama, and early in January, 1531, sallied forth on his third and last expedition for the conquest of Peru."


[Footnote 13: "El qual haviendo hecho bendecir en la Iglesia mayor las banderas i estandarte real dia de San Juan Evangelista de dicho ano de 1530, i que todos los soldados confesasen i comulgasen en el convento de Nuestra Senora de la Merced, dia de los Inocentes en la misa cantada que se celebro con toda solemnidad i sermon que predico el P. Presentdo Fr. Juan de Vargas, uno de los 5 religiosos que en cumplimiento de la obediencia de sus prelados i orden del Emperador pasaban a la conquista." Naharro, Relacion Sumaria, Ms.]