is one of the best naturally illuminated cathedrals in America". People were offered the possibility to be buried below the cathedral, helping to fund the construction and maintenance of the building. Historical value The cathedral has the historical value of being the Episcopal first diocese of the Catholic Church in Nicaragua, founded in 1531 and therefore one of the oldest dioceses in America. It is currently the headquarters of the Diócesis of León. Beneath the cathedral, in crypts designed to survive earthquakes, the mortal remains of 27 people rest, among them 10 bishops, 5 priests, an eminent leader of the independence movement, three poets, a musician, six notables and a slave. Here are buried prominent Nicaraguan people, such as Miguel Larreynaga, poets Rubén Darío, Salomón de la Selva and Alfonso Cortés, the musician José de la Cruz Mena, doctor Luis H. Debayle, professor Edgardo Buitrago, the first bishop of León and last bishop of all of Nicaragua, Monsignor Simeón Pereira, and Bishop Castellón and the priest Marcelino Areas. The tomb of Darío, father of the Modernist movement in Spanish-language literature and considered Prince of Castilian letters, is to the foot of the statue of San Pablo. At the beginning of the 20th century, the Bishop, Monsignor Simón Pereira y Castellón (the same who presided over the funeral of Darío the 13 February 1916) commissioned the Granadan sculptor Jorge Navas Cordonero to make the statue of the Virgin Mary crowning the central pediment of the facade, and the Atlantes between the pediment and the towers. Navas also sculpted the Neoclassical statues of the Twelve Apostles next to the columns of the central nave, the lion of Dario's tomb, very similar to the Lion of Lucerne, Switzerland (carved by the Danish sculptor Bertel Thorvaldsen, 1770–1844), the sculpture of Christ marking Monsignor Pereira's tomb, and several other decorations inside the Cathedral and its Chapel of the Sacrarium. It is also home to a splinter of the original cross upon which Jesus died. Illustrious figures buried in the Cathedral Bishops: Diego Alvaréz de Osorio, Francisco de Mendavia and Antonio de Valdivieso, the first three bishops of Nicaragua, whose remains were transferred from León Viejo on February 26, 2008. Juan Benito Garret y Arlovi, Domingo Antonio Zattarain, José Antonio Flores de Ribero, Juan Carlos Vílchez y Cabrera, Nicolás García Jerez, Simeón Pereira y Castellón, Agustín Nicolás Tigerino y Loáisiga and Cesár Bosco Vivas Robelo. Priests: