Juan Diego Cuauhtlatoatzin
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A statue of Juan Diego and Bishop Zumárraga in front of a church in Los Angeles, California. |
Tradition maintains that
Juan Diego Cuauhtlatoatzin (1474 – May 30, 1548) was an
indigenous Mexican who witnessed an apparition of the
Virgin Mary as
Our Lady of Guadalupe.
He was canonised in the
Roman Catholic Church on
July 31,
2002, becoming the first
indigenous American saint in the Catholic Church.
Juan Diego, according to the story generally accepted by Catholics, was born in
1476 to a
peasant family of the
Chichimeca nation.His birth name,
Cuauhtlatohuac, is in the
Nahuatl language and has been translated as "Talking Eagle".He was born and grew up in
Cuautitlan, a city in the
Aztec Empire, about 20 km north of the Aztec capital
Tenochtitlan (now
Mexico City).
The date of Cuauhtlatohuac's conversion to Catholicism is variously given as
1524 or
1525. He took the name "Juan Diego" and moved to
Tolpetlac, closer to Tenochitlan and the Catholic mission that had been set up by the
Franciscan friars. During a walk from his village to the city on
December 12,
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. The Virgin told him to gather
flowers from the hill, even though it was
winter, when normally nothing bloomed. He found Spanish
roses and presented these to the bishop. When the roses fell from his apron, an
icon of the Virgin remained imprinted on the cloth.
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
America. But Juan Diego himself, who died on
May 30,
1548, has also been revered by many people.
In
1987,
Pope John Paul II beatified him and, shortly thereafter,
miracles began to be attributed to him, starting with a healing on
May 6. This sparked further investigation by Catholic authorities, and on
July 31,
2002, the Pope declared Juan Diego a saint.
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Statue of Saint Juan Diego, Church of San Juan Bautista, Coyoacán, DF |
Skeptics, however, including some Catholics, have doubted the very existence of Juan Diego. The earliest written reference to him dates from
1648, in a publication by a Mexico City
priest about Our Lady of Guadalupe. A
1649 publication in Nahuatl 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 apron (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 canonisation process, but they charge that the official investigators ignored the evidence that they presented.
Whether or not this charge is valid, it is true that many Mexicans see the canonisation 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. At the same time, the Pope urged fighters for indigenous rights to renounce
violence. The
Zapatista movement, who often uses images of Our Lady of Guadalupe, had previously done just that.
*
Our Lady of Guadalupe*
Biography from a Catholic site dedicated to Our Lady of Guadalupe*
Biography from the Holy See for Juan Diegos Canonization
