San Diego Trolley regularly whizzes past Our Lady of Shoes.

Our Lady of Shoes

San Diego, California

A Madonna-like figure sits holding a lap full of shoes. She's said to maintain a vigil over the graves of the indigent dead in Mt. Hope Cemetery.

Mt. Hope Cemetery contains thousands of buried paupers, anonymous people put to rest since the 19th century by the city of San Diego, which owns the large multi-racial, non-denominational cemetery. Many of the nameless dead were homeless, or bodies found along the border between the U.S. and Mexico.

"Our Lady of Shoes" (or "Nuestra Sra de Los Zapatos") is a sculpture given as a sister-city gift on April 26, 1999 to then San Diego Mayor Susan Golding, from Mayor Jorge Carlos Obregon of Leon, Mexico (a city long touted as "Shoe Capital of the World"). The statue was installed here in 2009, just a few feet from the San Diego Trolley Line that passes through the property.

The barefoot woman in a robe is seated on a pile of shoes (Soles of the forgotten? Hmm?). She smiles down beatifically, not at the baby Jesus, but at the pair of cowboy boots on the pile of shoes she holds in her lap. Her hair seems to be styled in a sturdy boot tread pattern.

Christians often create devotional gardens around Mary statues, and one of the flowers, the columbine, is also known as "Our Lady's Shoes." So perhaps the shoes are flowers of footwear.

Where's a shoe tree when you need one?