Brief

St. Juan Diego (1474–1548) was the first indigenous American saint in the Roman Catholic Church. Saint Diego is said to have seen an apparition of the Virgin Mary on four separate occasions in December 1531 at the hill of Tepeyac on the outskirts Mexico City. The Basilica of Guadalupe, built on the foot of the hill of Tepeyac, claims to possess Juan Diego’s cloak (tilma) on which an image of the Virgin Mary is said to have been impressed miraculously to prove the authenticity of the apparitions. These apparitions and the imparting of the miraculous image are known as the Guadalupe event, “el acontecimiento Guadalupano,” and became the foundation of the cult of Our Lady of Guadalupe which is ubiquitous in Mexico, and prevalent throughout the Spanish-speaking Americas. The Basilica of Guadalupe is now one of the world’s major pilgrimages for Roman Catholics. Juan Diego was beatified in 1990, and canonized in 2002.