Juan Diego
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
| Saint Juan Diego | |
|---|---|
 Juan Diego |
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| Born | c. 1474, Tlayacac, Cuauhtitlan, Mexico |
| Died | May 30, 1548, Tenochtitlan, Mexico City, Mexico |
| Venerated in | Roman Catholicism |
| Beatified | April 9, 1990, Vatican, Rome by Pope John Paul II |
| Canonized | July 31, 2002, Basilica of Guadalupe, Mexico City, Mexico by Pope John Paul II |
| Major shrine | Basilica of Guadalupe, Mexico City, Mexico |
| Feast | December 9 |
| Attributes | tilma |
 Saints Portal |
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Juan Diego (1474 – May 30, 1548) is believed to have been an indigenous Mexican who witnessed an apparition of the Virgin Mary as Our Lady of Guadalupe. He was canonized in the Roman Catholic Church on July 31, 2002, becoming the first indigenous American saint in the Catholic Church.
According to tradition, he was born in the calpulli of Tlayacac in Cuauhtitlán, which was located 20 kilometers (14 miles) north of Tenochtitlan (present-day Mexico City).
His birth name has been alternately been given as Quauhtatoatzin, Guauhtlatoatzin, and Cuatliztactzin, which have been translated as "Talking Eagle" in the Nahuatl language.
He and his wife converted to Catholicism in 1524 or 1525, taking the Christian names Juan Diego and María Lucía. They moved to Tolpetlac to be closer to Tenochtitlan and the Catholic mission that had been set up by the Franciscan friars. After hearing a sermon on the virtue of chastity, they decided to live chaste lives. This decision was later cited as a possible reason for which the Virgin chose to appear to Juan Diego. María Lucía died in 1529.
During a walk from his village to the city on December 9, 1531, he saw a vision of the Virgin Mary at the hill of Tepeyac, who spoke to him in Nahuatl. She told him to build an abbey on the site, but when Juan Diego spoke to the Spanish bishop, Fray Juan de Zumárraga, the prelate did not believe him, asking for a miraculous sign. On the morning of December 12, Juan Diego's uncle Juan Bernardino fell ill. Juan Diego set out to find a priest to administer the last rites for his uncle. On his way, he avoided the hill of Tepeyac in in hopes of not being delayed by another apparition. She met him on his path, however, and told him that his uncle had been cured. She ordered him to ascend the hill to gather flowers from the hill, even though it was winter, when normally nothing bloomed. There he found Spanish roses and other flowers and presented these to the bishop. When the roses fell from his tilma, an icon of the Virgin remained imprinted on the cloth, bringing the bishop to his knees.
The church was built in 1531, and thereafter Spanish missionaries used the story of Juan Diego's vision to help convert millions of indigenous people in what had been the Aztec Empire. Our Lady of Guadalupe, as the Virgin Mary came to be known in this context, still underpins the faith of many Catholics in Mexico and the rest of Latin America, and she is now recognised as patron saint of all the Americas. But Juan Diego himself, who died on May 30, 1548, has also been revered by many people.
Juan Diego deeply loved the Holy Eucharist, and by special permission of the Bishop he received Holy Communion three times a week, a highly unusual occurrence in those times.
Pope John Paul II praised Juan Diego for his simple faith nourished by catechesis and chacterized him as a model of humility for Catholics.
[edit] Doubts about the historicity of Juan Diego's existence
Both Catholics and non-Catholics have expressed doubts about the existence of Juan Diego. There is no mention of either Juan Diego nor the Guadalupan apparition in the memoirs of Fray Zumárraga. In fact, he wrote that "The Redeemer of the world doesn’t want any more miracles, because they are no longer necessary." The earliest written reference to him dates from 1648, in a publication about Our Lady of Guadalupe by the Mexico City priest Miguel Sánchez. A 1649 publication in Nahuatl by Luis Laso de la Vega followed, referring to earlier Nahuatl sources that have not been found. In 1666, a formal Church inquiry gave authority to the traditions of Juan Diego. Skeptics believe that these sources, over a century after the events were supposed to have occurred, were actually part of an attempt by Catholic missionaries to bolster the legend of Our Lady of Guadalupe, which they were using to win the hearts of indigenous potential converts.
In 1996, Guillermo Schulenburg, then abbot of the present Basilica of Guadalupe, wrote in a Jesuit publication that he considered Juan Diego symbolic, not historical, and that the image on the tilma (now displayed in the church) was a painting. Schulenburg and some other Catholic clerics wrote a letter to the Vatican asking for a delay in the canonization process, but they charge that the official investigators ignored the evidence that they presented.
Whether or not this charge is valid, many Mexicans see the canonization of Juan Diego as a symbolic victory in the movement for greater recognition of their heritage reflected in the Catholic religion; the Pope held a Mass that borrowed from Aztec traditions, including a reading from the Bible in Nahuatl. The Pope urged the Catholic Church in Mexico to be respectful of indigenous traditions and to incorporate them into religious ceremony when appropriate. Significant segments of Mexico's indigenous population are converting to Protestantism, and many feel that Catholic Eurocentrism may be turning them off. Indeed, many native groups objected to the Church's official depiction of the saint, charging that he was made to appear far too light-skinned, incongruously bearded, and altogether more European than Aztec.
