Almost 500 years ago, a poor peasant wearing a simple cloak came face-to-face with a heavenly reality in the hills of Mexico – changing the lives of millions of people forever. 

When Juan Diego, a native Aztec and Christian convert, set out for catechism class one morning in December 1531, he heard a voice calling him by name. He climbed the nearby Tepeyac hill and encountered the most beautiful woman he had ever seen – Our Lady of Guadalupe. 

She appeared as a mother who speaks tenderly to her children, dressed in Aztec garb and speaking the native language. She chose Juan Diego to request that a church – the current Basilica of Our Lady of Guadalupe in present day Mexico City – be built in her honor on the very hill where they stood.  

This was the first of five apparitions, four to Juan Diego and one to his uncle, all of which led to the revealing of Our Lady’s miraculous image on the tilma and the eventual building of the Basilica of Our Lady of Guadalupe.  

Millions of pilgrims have flocked to her image in the past 500 years, leading to more than 9 million conversions, making Our Lady of Guadalupe the greatest evangelizer in the Americas. She is a mother to each one of us, and a wonderful example throughout this seven-year journey of evangelization.  

To read more about the apparitions of Our Lady of Guadalupe, click here.

“There is no love like that of a mother. A mother who cares tenderly, anticipates our needs, leads us along the way and is a safe place to land in all of the ups and downs of life. In the Diocese of Phoenix we have a magnificent patroness, Our Lady of Guadalupe, who is this mother to each one of us.” – Bishop Dolan