Sculptor Javier Viver has decided to take the Hakuna Foundation to court over the image of the Virgin that the movement’s founder, priest José Pedro Manglano, commissioned from him in 2017 and which became the icon of its Holy Hours. The artist announced this in a statement published on his website, explaining that the disagreement, which began in 2021, centers on a second image that the movement later commissioned “to replace the original” and on the rights corresponding to each of the two works.
According to the statement, the parties maintain different positions regarding the relationship between the two images, and it has not been possible to resolve the conflict outside the courts despite several years of conversations and attempts to reach an agreement. Viver maintains that it is now up to the courts to examine the matter with all guarantees and determine the rights of each party, and he emphasizes that those rights directly affect his status as creator and an essential element of his professional activity. The sculptor states that he harbors no animosity toward Hakuna, that he does not intend to harm the foundation or its members, and that he is concerned that the proceedings may lead to a religious controversy or interfere with the devotion associated with the image, which he says he deeply respects. For this reason, he will not make any further public statements unless absolutely necessary. The statement does not specify which court the claim will be filed in or whether the lawsuit has already been submitted.
Asked by Vida Nueva, which broke the news, the movement responded that it is a technically complex situation being handled by the foundation and emphasized that both images reflect Hakuna’s devotion to the Virgin Mary.
Viver explained in an interview with Aleteia that Manglano asked him for an image of Mary that expressed the group’s charism: living on one’s knees and embracing the Eucharist. The starting point was a painting by artist Matoya Martínez-Echevarría, and the sculptor’s idea was to represent a pregnant Virgin embracing her womb, Mary as the first tabernacle, so that the sculpture itself was conceived as a tabernacle. The work was completed in 2019 and its reproductions spread through the movement’s Holy Hours in Europe, Latin America, China, and the United States.
The image that now presides over the chapel of El Estudio, Hakuna’s main headquarters, is the work of María Elisa Rivera. The movement commissioned it in 2021, and its online store presents it as designed by the artist “by commission of the Hakuna Foundation.” It depicts Mary kneeling, pregnant, and embracing Christ within her, sharing with Viver’s sculpture the slight smile, posture, embrace of the womb, loose robes, and headscarf that gathers the hair. On its website, the movement acknowledges that Nuestra Señora de Hakuna, Viver’s sculpture, was a commission of theirs that it no longer markets.
The two images are now sold separately. Hakuna’s store offers Rivera’s version, under the names Madre de Hakuna, Virgen de Hakuna, or Madre del Abrazo, in marble sand and resin, from 30 euros for the six-centimeter version to 2,850 euros for the seventy-centimeter version. Made in Heaven, the sacred art platform directed by Viver, markets his Nuestra Señora de Hakuna from 79 euros for the ten-centimeter version to 4,850 euros for the garden version, 65 centimeters with a lunette.
Viver, promoter of the Observatory of the Invisible, is also the author of the Bella Pastora, the Marian image linked to the Iesu Communio Institute, in the Burgos monastery of La Aguilera.
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