Our Lady of Guadalupe

Our Lady of Guadalupe (Spanish: Nuestra Señora de Guadalupe), also known as the Virgin of Guadalupe (Spanish: Virgen de Guadalupe), is a Catholic title of the Blessed Virgin Mary associated with four Marian apparitions to Juan Diego and one to his uncle, Juan Bernardino reported in December 1531, when the Mexican territories were part of the Spanish Empire.

A venerated image on a cloak (tilmahtli) associated with the apparition is enshrined in the Basilica of Our Lady of Guadalupe in Mexico City.

Pope Leo XIII granted a decree of canonical coronation for the image on 8 February 1887. The rite of coronation was executed by the former Archbishop of Mexico, Próspero Alarcón y Sánchez de la Barquera on 12 October 1895. Pope Paul VI raised the shrine to the status of Minor Basilica via his Pontifical decree titled Sacra illa Ædes on 6 October 1976. It is the most-visited Catholic shrine in the world, and the world's third most-visited sacred site.

According to the Nican Mopohua, included in the 17th-century Huei tlamahuiçoltica, written in Nahuatl, the Virgin Mary appeared four times to Juan Diego, a Chichimec peasant, and once to his uncle, Juan Bernardino. The first apparition occurred on the morning of Saturday, December 9, 1531 (Julian calendar, which is December 19 on the (proleptic) Gregorian calendar in present use). Juan Diego experienced a vision of a young woman at a place called the Hill of Tepeyac, which later became part of Villa de Guadalupe, in a suburb of Mexico City.

According to the accounts, the woman, speaking to Juan Diego in Nahuatl, his first language and the language of the former Aztec Empire, identified herself as the Mary, "mother of the very true deity". She was said to have asked for a church to be erected at that site in her honor.

Based on her words, Juan Diego then sought the Archbishop of Mexico City, Juan de Zumárraga, to tell him what had happened. Not unexpectedly, the Archbishop did not believe Diego. Later the same day, Juan Diego saw the young woman again (the second apparition), and she asked him to continue insisting.

The next day, Sunday, December 10, 1531, in the Julian calendar, Juan Diego spoke to the Archbishop a second time. The latter instructed him to return to Tepeyac and to ask the woman for a truly acceptable, miraculous sign to prove her identity. Later that day, the third apparition appeared when Juan Diego returned to Tepeyac; encountering the same woman, he reported to her the Archbishop's request for a sign, which she consented to provide on the next day (December 11).

On Monday, December 11, however, Juan Diego's uncle fell ill and he was obliged to attend to him. In the early hours of Tuesday, December 12, as Juan Bernardino's condition deteriorated, Juan Diego journeyed to Tlatelolco in search of a Catholic priest to hear Juan Bernardino's confession and help minister to him on his deathbed.