Our Lady of Guadalupe also known as the Virgin of Guadalupe
is a title of the Virgin Mary associated with a celebrated pictorial
image housed in the Basilica of Our Lady of Guadalupe in Mexico City.
Official Catholic accounts state that on the morning of December 9, 1531, Juan Diego saw an apparition of a young girl at the Hill of Tepeyac, near Mexico City. Speaking to him in his native language of Nahuatl, the girl asked that a church be built at that site in her honor. From her words, Juan Diego recognized the girl as the Virgin Mary.
Diego told his story to the Spanish Archbishop of Mexico City, Fray Juan de Zumárraga,
who instructed him to return to Tepeyac Hill, and ask the "lady" for a
miraculous sign to prove her identity. The first sign was the Virgin
healing Juan's uncle. The Virgin told Juan Diego to gather flowers from
the top of Tepeyac Hill. Although December was very late in the growing
season for flowers to bloom, Juan Diego found Castilian roses, not native to Mexico, on the normally barren hilltop. The Virgin arranged these in his peasant cloak or
tilma.
When Juan Diego opened his cloak before Bishop Zumárraga on December
12, the flowers fell to the floor, and on the fabric was the image of
the Virgin of Guadalupe.
Juan Diego was canonized in 2002, and his tilma is displayed in the Basilica of Our Lady of Guadalupe, the most visited Marian shrine in the world.
The feast day for Our Lady of Guadalupe is December 12 because Pope Leo XIII granted a Canonical Coronation towards the image on that date in 1895 The representation of the Virgin on the tilma is Mexico’s
most popular religious and cultural image, and under this title the
Virgin has been acclaimed as "Queen of Mexico", "Patroness of the
Americas" (1945), "Empress of Latin America", and "Protectress of Unborn
Children" (the latter two given by Pope John Paul II in 1999).
