Cecilia Giménez’s 2009 “Monkey Christ” restoration became a viral sensation. She died at 94.
The year in news started in much the same way as the last one finished – in tragedy and chaos – but I saw 2026 in oblivious, on a midnight plane flying somewhere over Africa.
And so it transpired that the first news report I read this year was about the death of the painter of the “Monkey Christ”.
Perhaps you remember this infamously restored church mural of Jesus in an obscure town in Spain, when the Christ figure was rendered more chimp than chap, like a simian potato, which became a viral sensation 14 years ago?
Its restorer died last Monday, aged 94.
There’s actually a bittersweet story – and maybe a few life lessons – behind her death.
A devout worshiper at El Santuario de Misericordia outside the town of Borja (population less than 5 000), Cecilia Giménez had noticed the 100-year-old little mural of her Lord gradually fading away and peeling off the wall, so finally she set to work patching it up.
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She was 81 when she did the revamp and she had only the best of intentions, but the road to hell is thus paved, or so they say.
So off she went on holiday halfway through and her efforts came to the attention of the local historical society who blogged about it.
The townsfolk got mad, the media picked it up and then the rest of world followed.
Cecilia was mortified. She had meant well, it all went horribly wrong, she’d wrecked the beloved face of Jesus, everyone was either angry or laughing at her and this was to be her legacy. She lost 17kg through anxiety.
Yet, what happened afterwards was food for the soul.
Suddenly, Borja found itself on the map: in five months, 10 times the usual number of yearly visitors came to see the former Ecce Homo, now dubbed Ecce Mono (Behold the Monkey).
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The sanctuary became a tourist attraction, bringing much-needed cash to what had been a slowly dying town.
The church museum flourished, merch was sold and funds raised paid not only salaries, but also for the accommodation of local old folks in a care home – including ultimately Cecilia and her disabled son.
The thing she did poorly but with love and an open heart; the thing she thought ruined her, bore fruit of an unanticipated and magical kind.
She died beloved.
As Cecilia might have said, the Lord works in mysterious ways.
