In the 16th century, the Virgin Mary appeared to an Indian in Mexico and left her figure engraved on a cloak he was wearing.
Newsroom (15/07/2025 10:30, Gaudium Press) This indigenous man was born in 1474, in a town near the capital of Mexico. In his native language, he was called by a word that means ‘talking eagle’; he was baptized at the age of 50 and given the name Juan Diego.
On 9 December 1531, he was on his way to a church in
Mexico City to attend Holy Mass when, passing the Tepeyac hill, he heard a voice calling him: ‘Juanito, Juan Dieguito!’
He then saw a beautiful maiden on a rock framed by vegetation that shone with different colours. It was Our Lady, who instructed him to tell the Bishop of her wish that a church be built on that spot.
Immediately after Mass, Diego explained his vision to Bishop Juan de Zumárraga, but the prelate did not take him seriously. When he returned to the site, the Virgin appeared to him and he told Her what had happened. She recommended that he go to the bishop again and tell him that the request had come from Heaven.
Juan Diego communicated the Virgin’s words to Bishop Zumárraga, who demanded a sign to prove his story. When he encountered the Virgin again, he told Her what had happened and She asked him to come back the next day, as She would present a sign.
A figure of the Blessed Virgin appeared on a mantle
He returned to his house and found his uncle seriously ill. The doctors he consulted could do nothing. In the evening, he went to find a priest to administer the Sacrament of Extreme Unction to the sick man.
As he passed by the hill, Our Lady appeared and he explained to Her that his uncle was dying. She told him not to worry, because She had already cured him.
In fact, his uncle later told him that the Mother of God had appeared to him, restored his health and, speaking in the indigenous language, said that She wished to be venerated as ‘Guadalupe’, an expression that in that dialect meant ‘She who crushes the serpent’.
The next day, the Juan Diego went to Tepeyac and the Blessed Mother told him to pick flowers on the top of the hill. When he went there, he saw many Castile roses in full bloom in the middle of winter; he picked several of them, which exuded a soft perfume, and put them in his tilma – a kind of cloak – and Our Lady arranged them in an orderly fashion. It was 12 December 1531.
He walked to the church and told the bishop what had happened and, opening the tilma, showed him the roses. When the roses were removed, everyone saw the figure of the Blessed Virgin on the mantle.
Her image, placed on an altarpiece, came to be venerated by the faithful as Our Lady of Guadalupe. Her devotion spread throughout Mexico, bringing about countless conversions.
Painting without paint and 46 stars
There are miraculous signs on her image, some of which we would like to mention.
A tilma (cloak), made of vegetable fibre, lasts a maximum of 20 years. The image of Our Lady of Guadalupe has remained unchanged for almost five centuries, despite having been left without protective glass for over a hundred years, in a humid and salty environment, and exposed to smoke and the heat of thousands of candles.
In 1920, communists exploded a bomb at the foot of the image that shattered stained glass windows, twisted candlesticks and a bronze crucifix, even affecting neighbouring houses, but the tilma remained intact.
Specialized technicians examined the tilma and declared that “there were no known colouring elements in the fibres […]. There are no mineral, vegetable or animal colours; we could say that it is a painting without paint […]. We would then be faced with a continuous apparition of the Blessed Virgin.”
The forty-six stars printed on it ‘coincide surprisingly with the constellations in the sky on 12 December 1531.’
The pupil of Our Lady’s eyes
The most stupendous sign is in the pupil of Our Lady’s eyes, where there are the figures of Juan Diego as well as the bishop and twelve people who were there when he showed the roses. The tilma is in the Basilica of Our Lady of Guadalupe, built at the foot of Tepeyac Hill in Mexico City. In 1910, St. Pius X proclaimed Our Lady of Guadalupe the Patron Saint of Latin America.
After St. Peter’s Basilica in Rome, the most visited church in the world is the Basilica of Our Lady of Guadalupe, which receives around twenty million people a year.
Juan Diego represented all of Latin America
Below we summarize some comments made by Dr. Plinio Corrêa de Oliveira on this subject.
The pupil is also called the ‘apple of the eye’.
“When someone is said to be “the apple of my eye”, it means that they are at the most sensitive and central point of my attention and consideration, of my affection. This symbolism was realized to the letter in the vision of Our Lady of Guadalupe.
“The fact that Our Lady showed herself to be so extremely affectionate and benign towards this indigenous Latin American was a way of expressing a particular concern for the continent to which he belonged.
“Yes, it is no exaggeration to think that in her eyes, Juan Diego represented the whole of Latin America. And each one of us, symbolized by this Indian, was mirrored in Mary’s eyes. This idea is no nonsense, given that the Holy See has declared Our Lady of Guadalupe to be the Patroness of Latin America.” (…)
“Ibero-America’s mission is to raise and place the torch of Latin Catholic culture on a pinnacle, entirely at the service of the Faith, to shine in the world. Otherwise, it has no meaning.
“This Catholic culture is fallen, prostrate, but it revives in our continent with all the vigour of youth and with possibilities for the future, conserving and enhancing the legacies received from the incomparable cultural expressions of European Christendom.
‘We are the rebirth and reforestation of these values in the areas protected by Our Lady of Guadalupe.’
By Paulo Francisco Martos
With Files From Notions of Church History
Compiled by Sandra Chisholm
Related Images:
