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Juan Diego and the legend: Legend has it that in the winter of 1531 a vision of the Virgin Mary appeared to Juan Diego, an indigenous farmer and recent convert to Christianity, who was canonized by Pope John Paul II in 2002.
The appearance took place 10 years after the Spanish defeated the Aztecs. The grand city of Tenochtitlán was in ruins. Juan Diego, born in 1474, participated in Aztec ceremonies and witnessed the collapse of his civilization. What is important in the story is that Mary appears not to the Spanish conquistadores, but to the Mexicans. And it is to Juan Diego, a poor farmer, that she requests a church be built on this hillside, sacred to the Aztecs.
According to legend, Mary asked Juan Diego to climb the hill where he would find special proof of the divine appearance to take to the Bishop. On top of the hill, Juan Diego surprisingly found flowers, in spite of the winter frost. He picked them up and bundled them inside his cloak. When he went to the Bishop's house to give him the flowers, another surprise was in store. The image of the Virgin Mary appeared on the inside of his cloak. This is the portrait that hangs in the Basilica today.
Mary stands on a crescent moon and is silhouetted by the rays of the sun - symbols of the Aztec gods. She is also pregnant, signified by the black cord around her waist. While contemporary viewers may see her folded hands as a sign of prayer - this was the indigenous symbol of gift giving. This image resonated throughout Mexico and the Americas. You'll find Guadalupe shrines from the U.S.-Mexico Borderlands to Brazil.
| The enormous basilica of Nuestra Senora de Guadalupe in Mexico City is the most visited pilgrimage site in the Western Hemisphere. Its location, on the hill of Tepeyac, was a place of great sanctity long before the arrival of Christianity in the New World. In pre-Hispanic times, Tepeyac had been crowned with a temple dedicated to an Earth and fertility goddess called Tonantzin, the Mother of the Gods. Tonantzin, like the Christian Guadalupe who usurped her shrine, was a virgin goddess, also associated with the moon. The Tepeyac hill and shrine had been an important pilgrimage place for the nearby Aztec capital city of Tenochtitlan. Following the conquest of Tenochtitlan by Hernan Cortez in 1521, the shrine was demolished, and the native people were forbidden to make pilgrimages to the sacred hill. Such practices were considered by the Christians to be devil worship. This policy of labeling pagan religious practices as demonic already had a more than thousand year history in Christian Europe. On Saturday, December 9, 1531, a baptized Aztec Indian named Juan Diego set out for church in a nearby town. Passing the pagan sacred hill of Tepeyac, he heard a voice calling to him. Climbing the hill, he saw on the summit a young woman who seemed to be no more than fourteen years old, standing in a golden mist. Revealing herself as the "ever-virgin Holy Mary, Mother of God" (so the Christian telling of the story goes), she told Juan Diego to go to the local bishop and tell him that she wished a church to be built on the hill. Juan did as he was instructed, but the bishop did not believe him. On his way home, Juan climbed the sacred hill and again saw the apparition, who told him to return to the bishop the next day. This time the bishop listened more attentively to Juan's message from Mary. He was still skeptical, however, and so asked for a sign from Mary. Two days later Juan went again to Tepeyac hill and, meeting Mary, was told by her to climb the hill to the site of their first encounter, pick a bunch of roses that would be growing there, and return with the roses to Mary. Juan climbed the hill with misgivings. It was the dead of winter, and no roses could possibly be growing on the cold and frosty hill. But upon reaching the summit Juan found a profusion of roses, an armful of which he gathered and wrapped in his shawl to carry to Mary. Arranging the roses, Mary instructed Juan to take the shawl-encased bundle to the bishop, for this would be her sign. When the bishop unrolled the shawl, the presence of the roses was astounding. But truly miraculous was the image that had mysteriously appeared on the inside of Juan Diego's shawl. The image showed a young woman without child, her head lowered demurely. Wearing an open crown and flowing gown, she stood upon a half moon. Soon thereafter the bishop began construction of the church. News of the miraculous apparition of the Virgin's image on a peasant's shawl spread rapidly throughout Mexico. Indians by the thousands, learning that the mother of the Christian God had appeared to one of their own kind and spoken to him in his native language, came from hundreds of miles away to see the image, now hanging above the altar in the new church. The miraculous image was to have a powerful influence on the advancement of the Church's mission in Mexico. In only seven years, from 1532 to 1538, more than eight million Indians were converted to Christianity. The shrine, rebuilt several times over the centuries, is today a great basilica that has space for 10,000 pilgrims. Juan Diego's shawl is preserved behind bulletproof glass and hangs twenty-five feet above the main altar in the basilica. For more than 450 years the colors of the image have remained as bright as if they were painted yesterday, and the coarse-woven cactus cloth of the shawl, which seldom lasts more that twenty years, shows no evidence of decay. |
Juan Diego was beautified (made an official saint of the Catholic Church) by Pope John Paul II, on May 6, 1990.
The Original Basilica: The Basilica is a Catholic Cathedral constructed on the site of the supposed appearance of the Virgin Mary to Juan Diego, a peasant, who asked him to tell the priest to build a Cathedral to her on that spot. The original Basilica was built and finished in 1709. Interestingly this site (the hill of Tepeyac) in northern Mexico City is also the site of Aztec temple of Tonantzin, the Aztec Mother of the gods, the goddess of fertility. Slide show of Old Basilica.
The New Basilica: In more recent years the old Basilica began settling due to the poor foundation of the Valley of Mexico for buildings, so after a failed attempt to lay a new foundation under the old Basilica, a new Basilica was begun in 1974 and finished in 1976. It's form is circular so that the hanging of the cape of Juan Diego with the image of the Virgin can be seen from any angle. The new Basilica is built on 350 control "pilots" that support the structures weight, and can be adjusted over time to account for settling and tremors so that it is always at street level regardless of how much the building actually sinks. It can accommodate 10,000 people in the main chapel (mostly standing) and when its 9 massive doors are opened, another 40,000 more can see and hear the activities inside. There are 8 chapels in the mezzine area of the Basilica that can accommodate 250 people. Slide show of New Basilica
Worship in the Basilica: The Basilica is the most visited pilgrimage site in the northern hemisphere, visited by some 15 million visitors every year, with normally at least a few thousand visiting it each day. In comparison the Basilica in Lourdes France (where another appearance of the Virgin supposedly happened) only has 6 to 8 million a year. The only place visited by pilgrims more than the Basilica is Mecca in the Middle East. Normally on any given Sunday there can be as many as 100,000 people in the Basilica. Each year there are 1,800 pilgrimages to the Basilica, with 300 in December alone. Of the 45 popes since 1531, 25 have made proclamations about the Virgin of Guadalupe. http://www.queenofpeace.ca/Popes_on_Guadalupe.htm In 2003, the Day of the Virgin (December 12th) saw 3.5 million visitors to the shrine in the evening before and the day of the 12th. Authorities reported medical help given to 576 pilgrims for exhaustion and abrasions of the knees (from crawling on their knees the last few miles).
Last Updated on 06/13/04
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