The Chapel of the Rapture (former Hospital of Saint Lucia)

The hospital of Saint Lucia, dating back to medieval times, was known as the hospital of the poor or the destitute. In the sixteenth century, hospitals were not health centres, but places which provided food and shelter to pilgrims, passers-by, the poor, the homeless, the mentally ill and abandoned or orphaned children. Therefore, they took in people of little means or people who were passing through. The hospital of Saint Lucia was the first place, and indeed the main one, where the pilgrim stayed during his 11 months in Manresa. Ignatius would eat with the poor and helped to look after the sick, thus practising his vows of poverty and helping the less fortunate.

According to witnesses, while singing Mass, the Pilgrim underwent a spiritual rapture and remained for eight days and eight nights motionless on the chapel floor.

Saint Lucia hospital was demolished during the Civil War. In the same place 50 years later, and taking advantage of the rubble, the chapel of Saint Lucia was rebuilt. A sculpture of a recumbent Saint Ignatius, which had already been worshipped before the War, was put back into this significant place. These two places are now known as the Chapel of the Rapture.