Saint Juan Diego Cuauhtlatoatzin

Juan Diego was born around 1474 in Cuauhtitlán, then part of the Aztec world and now in Mexico. His Nahuatl name, Cuauhtlatoatzin, is usually understood to mean "the one who speaks like an eagle." He was not destitute, but he was neither rich nor influential. In 1524, at about fifty, he was among the first to be baptized after a group of twelve Franciscan missionaries arrived in Mexico, and his wife, baptized with him, took the name María Lucía. He was later widowed.

The fall of Tenochtitlan to the Spaniards in 1521 had ended Aztec rule. On the morning of 9 December 1531, ten years later, Juan Diego was crossing the hill of Tepeyac, near Mexico City, on his way to town when he heard birdsong and saw a woman who called him tenderly by name. According to the tradition, she told him she was the ever-virgin Mary, mother of the one true God, and asked him to tell the bishop that she wanted a church built at the foot of the hill.

The bishop, Juan de Zumárraga, did not believe him. That evening Juan Diego met the Lady again, told her he had failed, and asked to be excused because he felt unworthy. She told him to go back the next day. This time the bishop questioned him closely about the place and the circumstances and asked for a sign. On the day he was to bring it, Juan Diego's uncle, Juan Bernardino, fell gravely ill, and he set out to find a priest for the dying man. He tried to take another path to avoid the hill, but the Lady met him anyway. The tradition says the sign was an image of the Virgin impressed on his cloak, or tilma, which he carried to the bishop filled with roses.

After these events Juan Diego is said to have given his life to God. He lived for about seventeen years in a small house beside the chapel built in honor of Our Lady of Guadalupe, a house the bishop had arranged for him, and he died in 1548.

Devotion to Our Lady of Guadalupe spread across Mexico and the Americas, and the basilica at the foot of Tepeyac, which houses the cloak traditionally said to be his, is now one of the great Christian pilgrimage sites. Pope John Paul II beatified Juan Diego on 6 May 1990 and canonized him on 31 July 2002, traveling to Mexico City for both ceremonies. He was the first Indigenous person of the Americas to be canonized, and he is remembered for his humility and his devotion to the Virgin at her shrine.

Saint Juan Diego Cuauhtlatoatzin, pray for us.