St. Juan Diego

Their story

Juan Diego, whose Indigenous name was Cuauhtlatoatzin, was born around 1474 in a village near present-day Mexico City. He was a farmer and laborer. In the 1520s, soon after Franciscan missionaries arrived, he and his wife were baptized. He walked many miles to attend Mass and religious instruction. On December 9, 1531, while passing Tepeyac Hill on his way to Mass, Juan Diego saw a beautiful young woman who spoke to him in his own language, Nahuatl. She identified herself as the Virgin Mary and asked him to tell the bishop to build a church on that spot. The bishop, Juan de Zumárraga, was doubtful and asked for a sign. On December 12, Mary told Juan Diego to gather flowers from the top of the hill, though it was winter. He found Castilian roses in bloom, gathered them in his tilma, a cloak woven of cactus fiber, and brought them to the bishop. When he opened the tilma, the roses fell to the floor, and on the cloth was the image of Our Lady of Guadalupe, which is still venerated today. Juan Diego spent the rest of his life caring for the small chapel built at Tepeyac. He died in 1548. Pope St. John Paul II canonized him in 2002, the first Indigenous saint of the Americas.