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The Virgin of Guadalupe (Virgen de Guadalupe, La Virgen Morena) is the most loved and revered of all saints (santos) in Mexico. She is the one who reached out to and claimed the native people of Mexico as her own.
Early on Saturday morning of December 9, 1531, Juan Diego, a poor convert, first saw the Virgin. He was at Tepeyac Hill (3 miles from the Mexico City Cathedral). He heard Heavenly music and then her voice. She was before him "radiant as the sun". She told him to tell the Bishop that they were to build a church on that spot (where one to the Aztec goddess presently stood) so she could be near her people to love and protect them. She called him "my son" and said, "I am the Mother of all of you who dwell in this land."
According to a legend first published in 1648, in 1531 the Virgin Mary appeared in the form of a young mestizo woman to the neophyte Indian Juan Diego on Tepeyac hill, the location of Tonantzin's shrine. Between December 9 and 12, the Virgin of Guadalupe continued to appear and requested through Juan Diego that a church dedicated to her be built on the site. When the bishop-elect of Mexico City, Juan de Zumarraga, demanded proof, the Virgin told Juan Diego to gather roses from a nearby hillside, put them into his tilma (cloak) and bring them to the bishop. When the roses where released, the Virgin's image was imprinted on the tilma, which now hangs in the Basilica in Mexico City and is an object of veneration, daily devotion, and a major pilgrimage site.
For more than 450 years the colors of the image have remained as bright as if they were painted yesterday, and the coarse-woven cactus cloth of the shawl, which seldom lasts more that twenty years, shows no evidence of decay.
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