Qualla: San Cosme y Damián

San Cosme y Damián: Introduction

Sun, 21 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Ulises Icardi, CC BY-SA 4.0. In the bell tower of a mission church near the Paraná River, a Jesuit priest pointed a telescope of his own making at the night sky and watched the moons of Jupiter swing around their planet. The instrument was cobbled from a metal tube, two convex lenses, and quartz he had gathered along the river. The year was the early 1700s, the place a frontier reduction in what is now southern Paraguay, and the man, Buenaventura Suárez, is remembered today as the first astronomer of South America. San Cosme y Damián has never quite let that go - and the church he watched from still stands.

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Image: Ulises Icardi | CC BY-SA 4.0

San Cosme y Damián: The Healing Saints on the Border

Sun, 21 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Iamlatin, CC BY-SA 3.0. The Jesuits named the mission for Saints Cosmas and Damian, twin brothers of the third century who practiced medicine and, by tradition, took no payment for it. It was a fitting patronage for a place built on care and craft. San Cosme y Damián sits in the Itapúa Department about ...

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Image: Iamlatin | CC BY-SA 3.0

San Cosme y Damián: A Telescope in the Bell Tower

Sun, 21 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Adrianiks, CC BY-SA 3.0. Suárez was born in 1679 and arrived at the mission as a young man, where he turned a remote outpost into a working observatory. With the help of the Guaraní, he ground lenses and built telescopes, a pendulum clock, an astronomical dial, and a sundial - rudimentary by European sta...

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Image: Adrianiks | CC BY-SA 3.0

San Cosme y Damián: A Century of Eclipses, Foretold

Sun, 21 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Eduarda Susana Lugo Rolon, CC BY-SA 3.0. Suárez's masterwork was a book with an audacious title: Lunario de un Siglo, a "lunar almanac of a century." Published in the 1740s, it predicted, with remarkable accuracy, the eclipses that would fall between 1740 and 1841 - a full century of celestial events calculated by hand ...

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Image: Eduarda Susana Lugo Rolon | CC BY-SA 3.0

San Cosme y Damián: The Church That Never Closed

Sun, 21 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Krizlez, CC BY-SA 4.0. Most Jesuit missions in Paraguay are ruins you visit. San Cosme y Damián is different - it holds the only mission church in the country still in continuous use, a place of worship and a community center without interruption to this day. Inside are original wood carvings, some kee...

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Image: Krizlez | CC BY-SA 4.0