December 2023: Our Lady of Guadalupe and San Juan Diego



San Juan Diego was stopped on his way to Mass on December 9, 1531, by a woman who told him she was the mother of all those who lived in his land. She asked him to make a request to the local Bishop to build a chapel in her honor on Tepeyac Hill, the site of a former pagan temple. When Juan Diego approached Bishop Juan de Zumarraga and told him what happened, the Bishop had doubts and asked for proof that the apparition was real and truly of heaven.

Juan Diego returned to Tepeyac and, explained to the Virgin Mary what the Bishop requested. She told him to climb to the hill and collect the flowers growing there. He obeyed, and the Virgin Mary arranged the flowers within his cloak telling him this would be the sign he should present to the Bishop. When Juan Diego opened his cloak for the Bishop, there was a miraculous imprinted image of the Virgin Mary on the flower-filled cloak.

Thousands of people gathered in the Basilica of Our Lady of Guadalupe on July 31, 2002, for the canonization of Juan Diego, the Church’s first saint indigenous to the Americas. Pope John Paul II called the new saint “a simple, humble Indian” who accepted Christianity without giving up his identity as an Indian. Among the thousands present were members of Mexico’s 64 indigenous groups. Because of Juan Diego's evangelization, an estimated nine million Indians converted to the Christianity of La Moreñita (the beloved dark virgin). 

Nuestra Señora de Guadalupe, also called the Virgin of Guadalupe, holds a special place in the religious life of Mexico and is one of the most popular devotions. Her continuing significance as a religious and national symbol is attested by the hundreds of thousands of pilgrims who visit her shrine every year at the Basilica of Our Lady of Guadalupe in Mexico City.

Please join the Coalition for Racial Equity on Tuesday, December 12, 2023 at the 5:30 Mass to celebrate the Feast Days of Our Lady of Guadalupe and San Juan Diego.