The Empress of the Americas

If you think that the Spanish conquistadors are the ones who imposed Catholicism on the hapless Aztecs, well you’re wrong.

Lord knows they tried. And tried. And failed. In the first decade of Spanish rule (1521 – 1531), only a handful of natives embraced Christianity.

And then… well, here’s the story as found in the venerable Catholic Encyclopedia:

To a neophyte, fifty five years old, named Juan Diego, who was hurrying down Tepeyac hill to hear Mass in Mexico City, on Saturday, 9 December, 1531, the Blessed Virgin appeared and sent him to Bishop Zumárraga to have a temple built where she stood. She was at the same place that evening and Sunday evening to get the bishop’s answer.

He had not immediately believed the messenger; having cross-questioned him and had him watched, he finally bade him ask a sign of the lady who said she was the mother of the true God.

The neophyte agreed so readily to ask any sign desired, that the bishop was impressed and left the sign to the apparition.

Juan was occupied all Monday with Bernardino, an uncle, who seemed dying of fever. Indian specifics failed; so at daybreak on Tuesday, 12 December, the grieved nephew was running to the St. James’s convent for a priest. To avoid the apparition and untimely message to the bishop, he slipped round where the well chapel now stands.

But the Blessed Virgin crossed down to meet him and said: “What road is this thou takest son?”

A tender dialogue ensued. Reassuring Juan about his uncle whom at that instant she cured, appearing to him also and calling herself Holy Mary of Guadalupe she bade him go again to the bishop.

Without hesitating he joyously asked the sign. She told him to go up to the rocks and gather roses. He knew it was neither the time nor the place for roses, but he went and found them. Gathering many into the lap of his tilma a long cloak or wrapper used by Mexican Indians he came back.

The Holy Mother, rearranging the roses, bade him keep them untouched and unseen till he reached the bishop.

Having got to the presence of Zumárraga, Juan offered the sign. As he unfolded his cloak the roses fell out, and he was startled to see the bishop and his attendants kneeling before him: the life size figure of the Virgin Mother, just as he had described her, was glowing on the poor tilma.

The tilma was enshrined, and the basilica that holds it is the most-visited Catholic pilgrimage site in the Americas.

In the seven years that followed, 1532 through 1538, more than eight million people converted to the Catholic faith.

Can you imagine?

Eight million converts in seven years.

Today we celebrate the day when it began, for today is the feast of the patroness of the Americas – Our Lady of Guadalupe, who in 1945 Pope Pius XII proclaimed “Empress of the Americas”.

Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners.

O God, Father of mercies,
who placed your people under the singular protection
of your Son’s most holy Mother,
grant that all who invoke the Blessed Virgin of Guadalupe,
may seek with ever more lively faith
the progress of peoples in the ways of justice and of peace.

Through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son,
who lives and reigns with you
in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
God, for ever and ever.

Amen.