by Imonikhe Ahimie

Created on: March 10, 2009

The Mexican writer, Carlos Fuentes, apropos of his countrymen, once declared that, although a Mexican might cease to consider himself to be a Christian, such a person could not truly be considered to be a Mexican unless he or she subscribed to a belief in the Virgin of Guadalupe. In the same vein, the Mexican Nobel laureate (Literature, 1990) Octavio Paz considered that after over two hundred years of experimentation in faith his countrymen harboured a belief only in the Virgin of Guadalupe and the National Lottery.

The cult of the Virgin of Guadalupe is a particular instance of the extreme veneration, (some say worship) that the Catholic Church accords to Mary, the mother of Jesus. The cult had its origins in 14th century Spain and was centred on a monastery-fortress located in the Sierra de Guadalupe mountain range and its raison d'etre was the discovery of an image of the Virgin Mary said to have been made by St. Luke, the presumed writer of the gospel that bears his name and The Acts of the Apostles, and it very soon obtained the status of an object of pilgrimage.

With the conquest of Mexico by the Spanish and the rapid catholicisation of that country (New Spain, as it was then known) came the multifarious cults associated with the new religion. The cult of the Virgin of Guadalupe soon came to prominence as a result of some miraculous happenings in the 16th century.

The official Catholic sources tell us that on the morning of December 9, 1531, one Juan Diego, who, himself, has since been raised to the position of a saint with an estimated twelve million people witnessing his canonization by Pope John Paul II on July 31, 2002, saw a vision of a young woman on the slopes of the hill Tepeyac. Speaking to him in the native language, Nahuatl, the lady asked that a church be built on the site in her honour. Recognising her as the Virgin Mary, Juan Diego reported the event to his local bishop who told him to ask the lady for a miraculous sign as proof of her genuineness. The miracle came without delay; the Virgin asked Juan Diego to pick her some flowers from the summit of the hill, although it was the depth of winter and flowers were not in bloom. On the summit, Juan Diego did indeed find some flowers, but they were not a native variety; rather they were a European variety, Castilian Roses from the bishop's home province! The Virgin arranged the flowers in Diego's cloak and when Diego presented the flowers to the bishop, the image of the Virgin was miraculously

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