Concatedral de San Nicolás el Magno

St. Nicholas Cathedral
Concatedral de San Nicolás el Magno
Artists rendition of the cathedral in Rionegro.
6°09′14″N 75°22′26″W / 6.154°N 75.374°W / 6.154; -75.374Coordinates: 6°09′14″N 75°22′26″W / 6.154°N 75.374°W / 6.154; -75.374
Country	Rionegro, Antioquia,  Colombia
Denomination	Roman Catholic
Architecture
Style	Neoclassical
Administration
Diocese	Sonsón–Rionegro

The Catedral San Nicolás el Magno is a Roman Catholic co-cathedral, located in the municipality of Rionegro, Antioquia, Colombia. The church, under the Diocese of Sonsón-Rionegro is dedicated to Saint Nicholas and was elevated to the title of cathedral on 20 April 1968 by Pope Paul I.

The first church dates from between 1662 and 1668, and it became a center of evangelisation for the first priests and missionaries arriving from Europe. 125 years later, on March 8 of 1793, the then bishop of Popayán, Ángel Velarde y Bustamante, made a pastoral visit to the church, and was affected by what he saw as evil spirits in the church. Obtaining consent, he saw that the old temple was demolished and asked for administrative and communal funding and support to erect a new church in its place. The bishops Jose Pablo de Villa and Jose Felix de Mejía would be in charge to administer these resources, in addition to the directing and handling the work of the new parochial church.

The old church was demolished in the same year (1793), and the church commenced construction, with walls made of limestone and brick and later reinforced with mud. The style of the church was heavily influenced by the Iglesia de la Candelaria that had been built in Medellín twenty years earlier. Chief construction official was Antonio de Orozco, and the painter, Jose Pablo Chávez, a native of Cali and resident of Santa Fe de Antioquia was brought in to paint the lower part of the balconies depicting a ship and skies. In December 1803 the Father's Jose Pablo de Villa and Mateo Cardona began to celebrate in the new church, not yet finished, and finally on 8 September 1804, with a solemn inauguration, the church was officially opened.

On 21 March 1812, a treaty was signed and proclaimed in the church for the Constitution of the Free and Independent Sovereign State of Antioquia from colonial rule, in which 19 representatives of the towns of Antioquia participated. The independence was proclaimed in the pulpit of the church by the Bishop Jose Felix de Mejía, who was incidentally an uncle of the ex-president Liborio Mejía. On April 7, 1814, the funeral and subsequent burial of the dictator President of Colombia Juan del Corral took place.