Saint Juan Diego Cuauhtlatoatzin

Vidente del Tepeyac · Our Lady of Guadalupe (Mexico, 1531)

A humble indigenous to whom the Virgin appeared in the Tepeyac called him "the smallest of my children"; in his tymma was printed the image of Guadalupe, who evangelized a continent.

Who was that?

Juan Diego Cuauhtlatoatzin - the náhuatl name that is often translated "the one who speaks as eagle" - was born about 1474 in Cuautitlán, in the lordship of Texcoco. Indigenous of humble, peasant condition, was baptized around 1524-1525 by the first Franciscan missionaries. Widowed, he lived his faith with simplicity, walking every Saturday long distances to attend catechesis and mass. He died around 1548. St. John Paul II beatified him in 1990 and canonized him in 2002, as the first indigenous saint of America.

The Apparition

On the morning of Saturday, December 9, 1531, on the way to catechesis, Juan Diego heard a soft song on the hill of Tepeyac and saw a glowing Lady who called him. The apparitions took place between 9 and 12 December, just ten years after the fall of Tenochtitlan, in the full evangelization of the indigenous peoples.

The words of the Virgin

The Lady addressed him tenderly, in nahuatl, calling him "Juantzin, Juan Diegotzin" - "Juanito, Juan Dieguito" - "the smallest of my children." He presented himself as follows: "I am the perfect ever Holy Virgin Mary, Mother of the true God for whom one lives." He asked him to build a temple in that place to show and give his love and help to those who called on it. When John Diego, distressed by his uncle's illness, wanted to avoid it, the Virgin told him the words that are consolation of generations: "Am I not here, that I am your Mother? You're not under my shadow and protection? I'm not your health? Aren't you out of my lap?" As a sign to the bishop, he ordered him to cut flowers out of time on the top of the hill and carry them in his tylma.

Anecdotes and afterlife

Bishop Zumarraga had asked for a test. When Juan Diego deployed his tylma to him, the roses fell to the ground and the image of the brunette Virgin, dressed as an indigenous princess and enchantment, had been printed on the gross fabric. Juan Diego spent the rest of his life humbly, taking care of the first hermitage next to the image and telling those who reached what the "Celestial Girl" had told him.

Fruit

The image of Guadalupe in the tylma led to the conversion of millions of indigenous people and became the great Marian symbol of America; the Tepeyac shrine is today the most visited in the world, and Santa María de Guadalupe is patron of Mexico and all of Latin America.