Virgin of Guadalupe inspires millions, including Pope Francis

Before his journey to Mexico, Pope Francis had a favor to ask.

Before his first trip as pontiff to a place with more Catholics than any other Spanish-speaking country, where he will surely be mobbed by the thousands night and day, the pope requested something likely to be in short supply – a few minutes alone.

His only company will be perhaps the most revered religious artifact in the Western Hemisphere, a piece of fabric bearing the image of the Virgin of Guadalupe.

The request for a few minutes by himself with the image was a stunningly personal one from the pope. But he knows the Virgin well, he said, because she has seen him through difficult times.

“How many times I have been fearful of a problem or that something bad has happened and I don’t know how to react, and I pray to her,” said the pope in September, according to quotes distributed by Catholic News Service. Francis celebrates Mass at the Basilica of Our Lady of Guadalupe today, the second day of a six-day tour of the country.

As a man born in Argentina and the first pope from the New World, it should not be surprising that Francis turns for comfort to the “Empress of the Americas.”

In Mexico and Latin America, as well as the southwestern U.S., this image of the Virgin Mary is dynamic, ubiquitous and powerful. She is everywhere, on everything — stenciled on buildings, sprayed onto the sides of trucks, inked into people’s arms and legs and even the sides of their necks.

She appears among America’s Christian right and Catholic gang members too. “Once tattooed (with the Virgin of Guadalupe), the gangster is both sinner and saint, holding in visual tension the spectrum of human behaviors and hopes,” religion scholar Judith Dupre wrote.

The Virgin offers adherents her protection, listens to their sorrows and alleviates their pain. She cannot herself perform the miraculous, according to Catholic teaching, but she may intercede on behalf of those who ask her blessing.

World-changing event

Though it has not been declared a miracle within the Roman Catholic Church, the reports of her first appearance forever changed the Western world.

In the early 16th century, Spanish missionaries were having trouble converting the local Aztecs, who worshiped a pantheon of gods, both male and female.

The story of the Virgin of Guadalupe, told countless times in churches and from parents to children, unfolded in the winter of 1531: A peasant crossing a hillside called Tepeyac, near Mexico City, was visited by the Virgin, who appeared to him as dark skinned and spoke his language, Nahuatl. She asked him to build a church on the hill.

The peasant, named Juan Diego by the Spanish, rushed to tell the archbishop of Mexico City the good news. But the archbishop sent him away. Juan Diego returned to the hill, where the Virgin appeared to him once more.

The archbishop wouldn’t listen, Juan Diego told her. Try again, she responded.

And once again Juan Diego went to the archbishop to report the apparition, and once again he was turned away. Bring me a miracle, the archbishop told him. He needs a miracle, Juan Diego told the Virgin.

So, according to tradition, she provided it to him: a handful of Castilian roses — flowers from Spain, not native to Mexico, fully bloomed in the dead of winter. Juan Diego gathered up the flowers in his cloak, or tilma, and rushed to the archbishop. He let the flowers tumble out. There, on the fabric, was the image of the Virgin so familiar today: the slight incline of the head, the expression of compassion, the blue cloak studded with stars, the crescent moon at her feet held up by an angel, also dark skinned.

The date was Dec. 12, and for nearly 500 years, there it has remained, the most visited Marian shrine in the world.

This story was originally published February 12, 2016 at 7:47 PM with the headline "Virgin of Guadalupe inspires millions, including Pope Francis."