Saint Juan Diego Cuauhtlatoatzin

The Holy See places the birth of Saint Juan Diego Cuauhtlatoatzin at Cuauhtitlan in 1474 AD. He belonged to the Chichimeca people, and his town then lay within the kingdom of Texcoco. The Holy See renders the Nahuatl name of St. Juan Diego Cuauhtlatoatzin as the talking eagle.

He was a macehualli, a commoner, with a house and lands of his own. He was forty-seven when the city of Mexico fell to the Spanish in 1521 AD. Franciscan missionaries reached his region in 1524 AD, and their preaching moved him deeply.

He was baptized at fifty by the Franciscan Fr Peter of Ghent and took the name Juan Diego. His wife Maria Lucia was baptized with him, and the two were married in the Christian rite. He lived at Cuauhtitlan, but in the things of God he belonged to the parish of Tlatelolco.

After hearing Fray Toribio de Motolinia preach on chastity, the couple lived in continence. They had no children. Maria Lucia died about 1529 AD, and St. Juan Diego was two years a widower before Tepeyac.

Before dawn on Saturday, December 9, 1531 AD, St. Juan Diego set out for morning Mass. As he neared Tepeyac at sunrise he heard singing on the hilltop, like the songs of many rare birds. The singing stopped and a voice called him by name from the top.

He climbed the hill happy rather than afraid. At the summit the Blessed Virgin Mary named herself the mother of the true God. She asked for a sacred house on the plain below and sent him to the bishop of Mexico.

Bishop Juan de Zumarraga heard the whole message as if he did not believe it to be true. That evening St. Juan Diego begged the Virgin to send a nobleman in his place. She answered that he himself must go, and ordered him back the next day.

On the Sunday the bishop questioned him closely and then demanded a sign. Zumarraga had him followed, and the servants lost him at the wooden bridge near Tepeyac. They told the bishop he was lying, and agreed to seize him if he came back.

His uncle Juan Bernardino fell gravely ill, and St. Juan Diego missed the day appointed for the sign. Shortly after midnight the old man begged him to fetch a priest to hear his confession. Before dawn he crossed to the eastern side of Tepeyac so that the Virgin would not stop him.

She came down the hill, blocked his road and asked where he was going. She told him his uncle would not die of the sickness and was already well. Juan Bernardino recovered at that moment, as the household found out afterwards.

She sent him to the hilltop, where flowers of every kind were blooming out of their season. The frost was harsh, and nothing grows up there but rocks, thorns and mesquite. He gathered the flowers into his tilma, and she arranged them there with her own hands.

At the bishop's residence the servants tried three times to take the flowers and could not. Admitted at last, St. Juan Diego opened the cloak and the flowers fell to the floor. The image of the Virgin stood on the cloth, and Bishop Zumarraga knelt and wept.

A shrine of adobe stood at the foot of Tepeyac by 1532 AD, and pilgrims began to come. St. Juan Diego left his house and lands to Juan Bernardino and moved into a hut beside the chapel. He swept the church daily, fasted, did penance and received communion often.

Guadalupan tradition, recorded by Francisco de Florencia, holds that his neighbours called him the Pilgrim and the Solitary. Plague took Juan Bernardino on May 15, 1544 AD, and he was buried in the church at Tepeyac. St. Juan Diego died in 1548 AD, about seventy-four years old, and was buried in the same chapel.

About 1556 AD the Nahua scholar Antonio Valeriano wrote the Nahuatl account that preserves St. Juan Diego's words. Archbishop Alonso de Montufar preached in support of the devotion at Tepeyac on September 6, 1556 AD. Two days later the Franciscan provincial Francisco de Bustamante preached against it before the viceroy.

Pope John Paul II beatified him at the Basilica of Guadalupe on May 6, 1990 AD. The same Pope canonized him there on July 31, 2002 AD, calling him the first indigenous saint of the American continent. The Church keeps his memorial on December 9, the day the Virgin first called his name.