| GUADALUPE |
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| In 1531 "Lady of Heaven" appeared to a humble Native American at Tepeyac, Juan Diego's, on a hill now of what is now Mexico City . She identified herself as a Virgin Holy Mary, Mother of the true God, the creator of all things, Lord of Heaven and Earth. She made a request for a church to be built on the site, and submitted her wish through Juan to the bishop. When the bishop hesitated, and requested a sign, the Mother of God, obeyed and sending her Native messenger to the top of the hill in mid-Dec to gather assorted roses. She also imprinted a picture of herself in his tilma, a poor cactus cloth, usually detiorates within 20 yrs but 475 yrs later it's still intact. Although 25 Popes have visited the site. Pope John Paul II visited 4 times. On his 3rd visit he declared that Dec 12th would be Our Lady of Guadalupe. During the same visit he entrusted the cause of life to her loving protection, and placed under her motherly care of the innocent lives of children, especially those unborn |
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| Additional infomation: Juan was a poor Native When his wife died, he moved to Tolpetac. He walked every Saturday and Sunday before dawn to be on time for mass. He walked with no shoes. He wore a mantle on cold mornings called a tilma. During one of these walks, which took 3 1/2 hours he saw the first vision. He was 57 yrs old, older than most Natives. He gave all he had to his uncle, and spent the rest of his life as a hermit. He died at 74 He got special permission from the bishop to receive Holy Communion three times a week. |
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| Conversions and shrines
By all accounts, when a young Juan Diego reported the apparition of Our Lady of Guadalupe on Tepeyac hill in Mexico in 1531, he did not receive a lot of attention in Rome, since the Church was busy with the challenges of the Protestant Reformation of 1521 to 1579 and perhaps very few Cardinals in Rome had ever heard the details of Mexico and its environs. Yet, just as a large number of people were leaving the Catholic Church in Europe as a result of the Reformation, Our Lady of Guadalupe was instrumental in adding almost 8 million people to the ranks of Catholics in the Americas between 1532 and 1538. The number of Catholics in South America has grown significantly over the centuries. Eventually with tens of millions of followers, Juan Diego impacted Mariology in the Americas and beyond, and was eventually declared venerable in 1987. Juan Diego was declared a saint in 2002. Furthermore, the Basilica of Our Lady of Guadalupe on Tepeyac hill in Mexico is now the third largest Catholic Church in the world, after Saint Peter's Basilica in Rome and the Basilica of the National Shrine of Our Lady of Aparecida in Brazil. |