Fulancho Khuris – the Cross of the Flowers at Bambolim

It’s not a tourist spot. It’s not even a place that someone would visit on a whim. What it is, however, is one of Goa’s most iconic spots on which a church now stands. Known to every Goan as the Miraculous Cross, everyone is bound to pass this place on the way to South Goa. A little bit of history about Bambolim Bambolim wasn’t always a separate parish. It used to originally be a part of the Siridão parish. There was no church on the Bambolim plateau either. Instead, the church originally stood where Siridão’s cemetery stands today. Around 1610, Augustinian Archbishop Dom Frei Aleixo de Menezes declared Bambolim a separate parish. Four years later, in 1616, a new Church was built on a hill with the monetary support of Gonsalo Pinto da Fonseca. In 1619, Archbishop Dom Frei Cristovao de Sa e Lisboa elevated it to a Parochial Church. But the Church structure which had an underground tunnel lasted for two and a half centuries. The hill on which the old Church lay is today known as Orth de Vigar or Padigaracho Dongor. The Communidade de Bambolim then built a chapel in 1851. This chapel was raised to a Church in 1825 and consecrated to Our Lady of Belem. Confraria Nossa Senhora De Belem is its confraternity.