Our Lady of Guadalupe
(Spanish: Nuestra Señora de Guadalupe), also known as the Virgin of Guadalupe
(Spanish: Virgen de Guadalupe), is a title of the Virgin Mary associated with a
celebrated pictorial image housed in the Basilica of Our Lady of Guadalupe in
México City. The basilica of Our Lady of Guadalupe is the most visited Catholic
site in the world, and the third-most visited sacred site in the world.
Official Catholic accounts
state that on the morning of December 9, 1531, Juan Diego saw an apparition of
a maiden at the Hill of Tepeyac, in what would become the town of Villa de
Guadalupe in the suburbs of Mexico City. Speaking to him in the native Nahuatl
language, the maiden asked that a church be built at that site in her honor;
from her words, Juan Diego recognized the maiden as the Virgin Mary. Diego
recounted the events to the 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, where he found Castilian roses, not native to Mexico, blooming in
December on the normally barren hilltop. The Virgin arranged the flowers in his
tilma or cloak, and 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.
The tilma has become
Mexico's most popular religious and cultural symbol, and has received
widespread ecclesiastical and popular support. In the 19th century it became
the rallying call of American-born Spaniards in New Spain, who saw the story of
the apparition as legitimizing their own Mexican origin and infusing it with an
almost messianic sense of mission and identity - thus also legitimizing their
armed rebellion against Spain.
