The Dirt Makes This New Mexico Church One Of The Worlds Holiest

Not the book/movie about Motley Crue ... the actual dirt.

One of the top 100 holiest places on Earth lies in northern New Mexico, about 5 hours from El Paso, Texas.

Santuario de Chimayo is 25 miles from Santa Fe, New Mexico which makes for an easy day trip from there or Albuquerque. It's actually a pretty easy day trip from El Paso too.

Though, personally, I recommend making that one an overnighter so you can take your time and really enjoy visiting the church.

Who decided what spots are holy and exactly how holy they are?

The list of the world's holiest places was compiled by Patheos.

To create this list we used an algorithm that considered multiple factors and parameters. These included the number of faiths attributing sacred or holy status to each site, the frequency of online searches for each location, actual visitors to the physical location and most notably, final voting by our editorial staff and a mixture of religious leaders and scholars who contribute to Patheos. -patheos.com

One of the things that draws the faithful to Santuario de Chimayo is the "holy dirt" that is said to have healing powers.

Why is the dirt at Santuario de Chimayo holy?

Legend has it that in 1810, on Good Friday, a group met near a spring that was sacred to the Tewa tribe. They saw a bright light far away and, upon investigation, found a weird crucifix that was half buried.

They notified a church in nearby Santa Cruz who had it brought to them. The next morning, the crucifix was gone and was eventually found right back where it came from.

This happened over and over again with the crucifix being gone in the morning only to be found again in its original spot. The church eventually quit trying to move it and left it where it, seemingly, wanted to be.

The hole it was found in is believed to be the one that now contain the "holy dirt".