Pope Lauds Icon of Mexico’s Devout

The brown-skinned Virgin of Guadalupe has long inspired Mexicans to make devout pilgrimages--on foot, by bicycle and even crawling on their knees for the last hundred yards--to the immense basilica that honors her image.

Now, Pope John Paul II, one of the Virgin Mary’s most ardent admirers, has invoked her inspirational power to declare her “the queen of all America,” making her a fulcrum for the Roman Catholic Church’s renewed evangelical mission throughout the Americas as the new millennium approaches.

When the pope landed Friday for his fourth visit to Mexico, he mentioned the Virgin of Guadalupe six times in his brief arrival statement. And the central Mass of the pope’s visit was celebrated Saturday at the modernistic basilica in northern Mexico City.

The 10,000 invited guests, and thousands more gathered around loudspeakers on surrounding street corners, all cheered when the pope announced that Catholic churches throughout the Americas will celebrate the Virgin’s feast day, Dec. 12.

Our Lady of Guadalupe holds a mystical grip over Mexicans for the simple beauty of her story: It holds that she appeared in 1531, 10 years after the Spanish conquest of the Aztec empire, and spoke to an Indian peasant named Juan Diego. She asked him to tell the bishop to build a church on the hill where she appeared. The bishop did not believe Juan Diego and asked for a sign.

On Dec. 12, 1531, the tale continues, she appeared again before Juan Diego and told him to pick flowers from the hillside, collect them in his frock and show them to the bishop. When he opened the cloth in front of the bishop, it bore her image.

The frock has hung ever since in the succession of churches built on the Tepayac Hill site.

The newest basilica, a cylindrical building with a copper roof, was built in 1976 and is the most visited Catholic shrine in the world after St. Peter’s in the Vatican. Once part of a separate village, it has been swallowed up by Mexico City’s relentless sprawl.

“For us, she is the mother of Mexico, and she is my mother. She is dark like us. We adore her every day,” said Clara Frias Tapia, a 55-year-old woman who had come to be part of the throng on a brilliantly sunny and unusually smog-free winter day in the Mexican capital.

The pope told the bishops assembled for the Mass that the appearance of the Virgin in 1531 “had a decisive influence on evangelization” by Spanish missionaries in Latin America.

“America, which historically has been, and is, a melting pot of peoples, has recognized in the mestizo face of the Virgin Tepayac, in Blessed Mary of Guadalupe, an impressive example of a culturally appropriate evangelization,” he said.

In a major policy document expressing his goals for the Americas, the pope endorsed the Virgin’s role as “patroness of all America and star of the first and the new evangelization.”

Father James Ronan, executive director of the secretariat for Latin America of the National Catholic Conference of Bishops in Washington, said John Paul has always been a Marianist pope.

“There’s no mistaking how he understands her power among the people and the mystery of her influence in bringing the message of Christ to the people,” Ronan said. “You must look at the power of the faith of the people, the simple people. It’s very authentic. That’s how this hemisphere has become Christian and Catholic in the south.”

Whereas much of the colonial-era evangelizing was directed by the hierarchy, Ronan added, the Virgin of Guadalupe’s appearance to Juan Diego “wasn’t perceived as coming from the top down. Rather, it came from the peasants, whose devotion and experience came through Guadalupe.”

Pilgrims come to the basilica from across Mexico, especially for her feast day. Some travel for a week or more on foot, while higher-tech pilgrimages on racing bikes have become common too. A Virgin of Guadalupe Web site, called “Interlupe,” was launched in 1996 to further extend her reach.

The Mexican government, which fought to minimize the Catholic Church’s power after independence in 1821, formally banned outdoor religious displays until 1992. Yet, in practice, people never ceased holding their pious processions in villages across the country, often with a statue of the Virgin held aloft.

On the street outside the basilica Saturday, 63-year-old Julian Castorena described the importance of the Virgin to him.

“It is not just tradition or custom, it is a belief,” he said. “The whole Mexican people share this belief about the Virgin because everything has been proved.

“There she appeared, on that hill, to Juan Diego,” Castorena said. “And ever since then, she has been a bulwark, an inspiration, for the conscience of all Mexicans. And now she has become the mother of all America.”