page_title: Juan Diego
section_title: Reconciling two worlds
hierarchical_section_title: Juan Diego / Pastoral significance of St. Juan Diego in the Catholic Church in Mexico and beyond / Reconciling two worlds
caption_attribution_description: Nederlands: Onze-Lieve-Vrouw van Guadelupe op de originele mantel van de heilige Juan Diego (1474-1548). Français&#160;: Dessin original de Notre-Dame de Guadalupe sur le tilma de Juan Diego.
context_page_description: Saint Juan Diego Cuauhtlatoatzin, also known as Juan Diego, a native of Mexico, is the first Catholic indigenous saint from the Americas. He is said to have been granted an apparition of the Virgin Mary on four separate occasions in December 1531 at the hill of Tepeyac, then a rural area but now within the borders of Mexico City. The Basilica of Guadalupe, located at the foot of Tepeyac, claims to possess Juan Diego's mantle or cloak on which an image of the Virgin is said to have been impressed by a miracle as a pledge of the authenticity of the apparitions.
  These apparitions and the imparting of the miraculous image are together known as the Guadalupe event, and are the basis of the veneration of Our Lady of Guadalupe. This veneration is ubiquitous in Mexico, prevalent throughout the Spanish-speaking Americas, and increasingly widespread beyond. As a result, the Basilica of Guadalupe is now one of the world's major centre of pilgrimage for Catholics, receiving 22 million visitors in 2010.
  Juan Diego was beatified in 1990 and canonized in 2002.
context_section_description: In the 17th century, Miguel Sánchez interpreted the Virgin as addressing herself specifically to the Indians, while noting that Juan Diego himself regarded all the residents of New Spain as his spiritual heirs, the inheritors of the holy image. The Virgin's own words to Juan Diego as reported by Sánchez were equivocal: she wanted a place at Tepeyac where she can show herself,
  as a compassionate mother to you and yours, to my devotees, to those who should seek me for the relief of their necessities.
  By contrast, the words of the Virgin's initial message as reported in Nican Mopohua are, in terms, specific to all residents of New Spain without distinction, while including others, too:
  I am the compassionate mother of you and of all you people here in this land, and of the other various peoples who love me, who cry out to me.
  The special but not exclusive favour of the Virgin to the indigenous peoples is highlighted in Lasso de la Vega's introduction:
  You wish us your children to cry out to [you], especially the local people, the humble commoners to whom you revealed yourself.
   
  At the conclusion of the miracle cycle in the Nican Mopectana, there is a broad summary which embraces the different elements in the emergent new society, "the local people and the Spaniards [Caxtilteca] and all the different peoples who called on and followed her".
  The role of Juan Diego as both representing and confirming the human dignity of the indigenous Indian populations and of asserting their right to claim a place of honour in the New World is therefore embedded in the earliest narratives, nor did it thereafter become dormant awaiting rediscovery in the 20th century. Archbishop Lorenzana, in a sermon of 1770, applauded the evident fact that the Virgin signified honour to the Spaniards (by stipulating for the title "Guadalupe"), to the Indians (by choosing Juan Diego), and to those of mixed race (by the colour of her face). In another place in the sermon he noted a figure of eight on the Virgin's robe and said it represented the two worlds that she was protecting (the old and the new). This aim of harmonising and giving due recognition to the different cultures in Mexico rather than homogenizing them was also evident in the iconography of Guadalupe in the 18th century as well as in the celebrations attending the coronation of the image of Guadalupe in 1895 at which a place was given to 28 Indians from Cuautitlán (Juan Diego's birthplace) wearing traditional costume. The prominent role accorded indigenous participants in the actual canonization ceremony (not without criticism by liturgical purists) constituted one of the most striking features of those proceedings.
caption: Image of Our Lady of Guadalupe as it currently appears on the tilma
exif: {"Image Orientation": "Horizontal (normal)", "Image XResolution": "72", "Image YResolution": "72", "Image ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Image Software": "Adobe Photoshop 7.0", "Image DateTime": "2005:03:03 13:22:43", "Image ExifOffset": "156", "Thumbnail Compression": "JPEG (old-style)", "Thumbnail XResolution": "72", "Thumbnail YResolution": "72", "Thumbnail ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormat": "294", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormatLength": "4651", "EXIF ColorSpace": "Uncalibrated", "EXIF ExifImageWidth": "283", "EXIF ExifImageLength": "484"}