What is the story behind Our Lady of Guadalupe?

On December 9, 1531, barely 10 years after the Spanish conquest of the Aztecs, Our Lady appeared to a native peasant named Juan Diego while he was crossing Tepeyac Hill, outside what is today Mexico City. After telling Juan that she was the “mother of the true God,” she told him that she wanted a church to be built there in her honor.

Juan Diego then approached the bishop of the new diocese of Mexico, Fray Juan de Zumárraga, asking for a church to be built. Without any proof, the bishop did not believe him. The Blessed Virgin then appeared again to Juan Diego, asking him to approach the bishop again. St. Juan obeyed her, and this time, the bishop requested a miraculous sign that would prove the story. When Our Lady appeared a third time to St. Juan on December 10, she said that she would provide a miracle the next day.

However, on December 11, Juan Diego’s uncle became seriously ill, and he took care of him instead of meeting the Blessed Virgin. When his uncle, Juan Bernardino, appeared to be in his final hours on the early morning of December 12, St. Juan left the house to find a priest.

Believing that he could avoid seeing the Blessed Virgin, he took another route. However, not to be outsmarted, she still appeared to him.

The Blessed Virgin asked where he was going, and he explained that his uncle was ill. In response to Juan’s lack of understanding of her great love for him, the Blessed Virgin asked him, “Am I not here, I who am your mother?" She then told him that his uncle had, in fact, recovered.

Then Our Lady asked Juan to collect some flowers from Tepeyac Hill, which is usually barren. He found Castilian roses, which are not native to Mexico, much less bloom in central Mexico in December.

The Blessed Mother arranged the roses in Juan Diego’s tilma, before he proceeded to the bishop yet again. Upon opening his tilma before the bishop and other witnesses, the miraculous image of Our Lady of Guadalupe was revealed as the roses fell to the ground.

The following day, St. Juan returned to his uncle and found him completed recovered, as the Virgin had said. Juan Bernadino reported that Mary had appeared to him and requested to be known under the title of “Guadalupe.”

Within seven years of this apparition, in which Our Lady manifested herself to the native peoples of Mexico as a sign of her maternal care, nine million accepted the Catholic faith. Remarkably, this amounts to an average of over 3000 people a day, every day for the next seven years. This is the number who were converted on Pentecost, as recorded in Acts 2:41.