Almost five hundred years ago, at dawn on 12 December 1531, on a hilltop outside Mexico City, the Blessed Virgin appeared to an indigenous Aztec man called Juan Diego. This was the fourth apparition he had received in four days, during the course of which Our Lady entrusted him with the task of convincing the naturally sceptical local bishop to build a basilica in her honour.
Juan Diego was one of the few of the indigenous population who had actually been received into the faith. Conversions were few and far between, and the Spanish Franciscan missionaries were having a hard time of it. Juan Diego needed something to convince the holy Bishop Zumárraga that this startling petition did indeed come from the Mother of God. In what must be one of the most beautiful details from any Marian apparition, the Blessed Virgin placed fresh, fragrant Castilian roses, miraculously growing on the rugged hilltop in midwinter, in Juan Diego’s outstretched poncho or “tilma,” with instructions to present this to the bishop as a sign. This he did, after finally being granted an audience with the bishop and his curia. On letting fly open the tilma to release the flowers, the gathered group gazed, stunned, at what they saw: not the roses but a beautiful image of the Blessed Virgin imprinted on the rough tilma. It is an image of the woman of the Apocalypse with a striking arrangement of stars on her blue mantle. This tilma, despite the fact that it should have decayed within a decade or two, is now seen by millions of pilgrims each year in the Basilica of Our Lady of Guadalupe, close to the site of this apparition, with both the tilma and its image in perfect condition.
