The indigenous who heard the Mother of God speak in her language

Juan Diego was born about 1474 in Cuautitlán, in the central altiplano of Mexico, with the name náhuatl de With auhtlatoatzinwhich means "the one who speaks like an eagle." He was a man of the Chichimeca people, peasant and weaver, who embraced Christianity around 1524, after the arrival of the Franciscans. He was baptized with his wife Mary Lucia and both lived a fervent Christian life until her death in 1529.

Juan Diego walked every week from Tulpetlac to Tepeyac to attend catechesis. He was a simple man, without any social weight or theological erudition, and precisely why the Virgin chose him: to show that God looks at the humble and not the powerful.

The Apparitions of Tepeyac: December 1531

On Saturday, 9 December 1531, at dawn, Juan Diego heard songs on the hill of the Tepeyac. A lady dressed as an Aztec princess spoke to him in nahuatl, with tenderness of mother, and asked him to tell Bishop Fray John of Zumárraga that he wanted a hermitage in that place. It was identified as "the ever Holy Virgin Mary, Mother of the true God for whom one lives."

In the face of the bishop's doubts, the Virgin worked the definitive sign: on December 12, she asked John Diego to cut off Spanish roses that miraculously blossomed on the hill, to collect them in her tilma - indigenous mantle of magey fiber - and take them to the bishop. When Juan Diego opened the tylma to Zumárraga, the roses fell to the ground and the image of the Virgin, which is now being venerated in the Basilica of Guadalupe, had been recorded in the fabric.

Life after the apparitions: hermit with the Lady

Juan Diego spent the last 17 years of his life as guardian of the first hermitage raised in the Tepeyac. He lived in a hut by the sanctuary, in voluntary poverty, penance and prayer. He rejected any protagonism and became a catotape among the indigenous people who went in mass to the sanctuary, attracted by the image.

His life consecrated to the service of the sanctuary lasted until his death on 30 May 1548. The image of his tylma, the object of scientific study for centuries, remains without rational explanation: the fabric has not been painted with known human technique, and the eyes of the Virgin contain reflective images identified by modern researchers.

Canonization and universal legacy

John Paul II beatified him in 1990 and canonized him on July 31, 2002 in the Basilica of Guadalupe, to millions of faithful, making him the first indigenous of America to be canonized. His party on December 9 marks the great Guadalupana celebration of December 12. Today, the Basilica of Guadalupe is the most visited Marian sanctuary in the world, with more than twenty million pilgrims per year.

"I am your mother. I'm not here, I'm your mother? You're not under my shadow and I'm holding back? Am I not the source of your joy? Are you not in the hole of my mantle, at the crossing of my arms?"
- The words of Our Lady of Guadalupe to Juan Diego, according to the Nican Mopohua

Why pray the Rosary with the intercession of San Juan Diego

San Juan Diego is the witness that the Virgin is looking for the simple, who are not counted in the eyes of the world. If you pray the Rosary feeling small or without merit, Juan Diego is your natural intercessor: he also doubted being worthy of the message he was carrying, and the Virgin told him that it was precisely him he he loved. Let his intercession bring you closer to the Morenita of Tepeyac while you pray.

Pray the Holy Rosary