Our Lady of Guadalupe

The land and the man

In 1531 Mexico was ten years past the Spanish conquest of 1521. A young Church was at work among peoples who had lost much. The bishop in Mexico City was a Franciscan, Juan de Zumárraga.

The Vatican's biography says Juan Diego was born in 1474 at Cuautitlán, now part of Mexico City. His own name was Cuauhtlatoatzin, which it gives as "the talking eagle". It says he belonged to the Chichimeca people, and that he was baptised at about 50 by the Franciscan Peter of Ghent. He was a poor layman, and Tepeyac lay on his way to Mass and instruction in the city.

The story below follows the Nican Mopohua, a Nahuatl account whose title means "Here it is told". Its date and author are discussed further down. It is the voice of tradition. It is not a police report, and it should be read with love and with care.

Saturday, 9 December: the hill sings

Juan Diego was walking before dawn. At the foot of Tepeyac he heard singing from the top of the hill, like the song of beautiful birds. Then the singing stopped, and someone called him by name. He climbed up and saw a Lady whose clothes shone like the sun. The rock under her feet glittered. The thorny plants of that dry hill looked to him like emerald, turquoise and gold.

She spoke to him tenderly, in his own language. One English translation gives her first question as: "Juanito, the most humble of my sons, where are you going?" She told him she was the Virgin Mary, and asked for a house of prayer to be built on the plain, where she could show her love and help to all who came. He was to carry this request to the bishop.

The first refusal

He went to the bishop's house, waited, and gave the message. The bishop listened kindly but found it hard to believe, and told him to come back another day. That same day Juan Diego returned to the hill. He begged the Lady to send someone of standing, since he was nobody. She answered that she had many servants, but that it was her wish to send him. He was to go again in her name.

Sunday, 10 December: the bishop asks for a sign

After Mass he went back to the bishop, in tears. This time the bishop questioned him closely and asked for a sign that the Lady truly sent him. He also had men follow Juan Diego, but they lost sight of him near the bridge on the road to Tepeyac. On the hill the Lady told him to come the next day, and she would give him the sign.

Monday, 11 December: the sick uncle

Juan Diego did not come. His uncle, Juan Bernardino, was gravely ill with fever, and he spent the day caring for him. The old man asked him to fetch a priest, for he believed he was dying.

Tuesday, 12 December: the roses

Before dawn he set out for the city. Ashamed, he took another path around the hill, so that the Lady would not stop him. She came down and met him on that very path. He told her of his uncle. The answer she gave is the best-loved line of the whole story. One translation has: "Am I not here, who is your Mother?" She told him not to fear, and that his uncle was already healed.

She sent him to the top of the hill to gather flowers. It was December, and the hilltop was bare rock and thorn. There he found roses of Castile in bloom. He gathered them into his tilma, the plain cloak of a working man. She arranged them with her own hands, and told him to open the cloak before the bishop alone.

The bishop's servants kept him waiting. At last he stood before the bishop and unfolded the cloak. The roses fell to the floor, and on the cloth was the image of the Virgin, the image still kept today. The bishop knelt, and asked pardon for his slowness. He kept the cloak in his chapel.

The uncle's story

Juan Diego led the bishop's men to the place she had chosen, and then went home. His uncle was well. Juan Bernardino said that the same Lady had come to him and healed him, and that she wished to be called Holy Mary of Guadalupe. He gave his testimony to the bishop.

According to tradition the image was carried in procession to a small chapel at Tepeyac on 26 December 1531. The Catholic Encyclopedia dates the first shrine to 1532, and the New Catholic Encyclopedia to about 1533.

What happened to Juan Diego

The Vatican's biography says that with the bishop's permission he lived as a hermit beside the chapel, caring for it and welcoming pilgrims. He died in 1548 and was buried in that first chapel.

The image is what anyone can see today, above the main altar of the basilica. Mary stands with her hands folded and her head gently bowed. Rays of light surround her. She wears a rose robe and a blue-green mantle with stars, and stands on a crescent moon held up by an angel. Readers of Scripture have often thought of the woman of Revelation 12:1.

The cloth measures about 1.72 by 1.07 metres. It is made of two pieces sewn together, and shows signs of having been trimmed. An old crown on her head, seen in older copies, disappeared in about 1887 or 1888. The historian David Brading argues that it was removed by human hands.

The cloth and the paint have been studied many times, and the results do not agree.

• In 1666 seven painters told an inquiry that no artist could have painted such an image on so rough a cloth.
• In 1751 to 1756 the painter Miguel Cabrera studied it and praised it in his book Maravilla Americana, finding several techniques in one picture.
• In 1787 painters working for José Ignacio Bartolache called the fibre palm, and first noted human touch-ups.
• In 1981 Philip Callahan and Jody Smith, using infrared, found no sketch beneath the main figure and some later additions.
• In 1982 the restorer José Sol Rosales judged the cloth to be linen and hemp, and the work to be by human hands.
• The cloth has also been called maguey, as the Catholic Encyclopedia does. So the very fibre remains disputed.

Popular books also claim figures reflected in her eyes. Critics answer that the eye tends to find shapes in small marks. None of this is Church teaching. Faith does not rest on a laboratory result, either way.

Two old dangers are often told. In 1785 or 1791 a worker is said to have spilled acid on the cloth. On 14 November 1921 a bomb hidden among flowers damaged the altar, yet the image was not harmed.

Guadalupe has real questions of history. An honest reader should know them, and need not fear them.

In short: the devotion at Tepeyac is old and sure. The full story of 1531 comes to us in writing more than a century later, and scholars disagree on how far it reaches back. The Church has canonised Juan Diego after review, and that is an act of the Church which Catholics honour. A Catholic may still study the documents honestly.