A day like today but from 2002, San Juan Pablo II Canonized San Juan Diego Cuauhtlatzin, seer of the Virgin of Guadalupe, in the Basilica of Guadalupe in Mexico City. Fr. Eduardo Chávez, who was a postulator of his cause, points out that it is the “first indigenous saint of the entire American continent.”
On that occasion – on the fifth and last time the Polish Pope visited Mexico – Juan Paul II highlighted The “wonderful example” of San Juan Diego, “a good man, straight of customs, loyal son of the Church, docile to the shepherds, lover of the Virgin, good disciple of Jesus.”
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“Guadalupe and Juan Diego have a deep ecclesial and missionary sense and are a perfectly incultured evangelization model,” said the pontiff.
“The strength of the documents” that prove the virtues of Juan Diego
The road to the canonization of the seer of the Virgin of Guadalupe was not easy. There were those who even doubted that the Indian saint had even existed.
In statements to ACI Press, Fr. Chávez, considered the greatest expert in the appearances of the Virgin of Guadalupe and director of the Higher Institute for Guadalupanos Studies (ISEG), remember that in the process “one of the most important things was finding documentation.”
“It is the strength of the documents and their perfect convergence” what is “to know, to get a little closer to the truth of the facts.”
In 1984, he recalled, “I was appointed external specialist on the Guadalupano event”, and since then “we found several very important documents in all the archives of the world, we could say, as is, because we went to the archives of New York, from Paris, London, of Spain, obviously from Mexico, Rome, etc.”.
“And we found so many documents that when I was later a member of the Historical Commission in 1998, and then a postulator of the cause of canonization of San Juan Diego, we saw clearly how deep this Guadalupano event is, the truth of the historicity of Juan Diego, his life and virtues.”
Father Chávez stressed that “thanks to that humble, simple tilma he carried, and that became a true earthly paradise, we have the wonderful and portentous image of Santa María de Guadalupe.”
“He on the altars is our intercessor. He on the altars is a model of holiness, holiness that we all take to the entire world, be other Juan Diegos who manifest above all with life the immense and merciful love of God through Santa María de Guadalupe in his Catholic Church,” he said.
“Totally false”: not an idol disguised or an adaptation of Extremadura
Fr. Chávez also warned about the different myths and lies that have been disclosed around the appearance of Santa María de Guadalupe in the Tepeyac, between October 9 and 12, 1531.
The Virgin of Guadalupe, stressed, “is not a disguise to the idol Coatlicue Tonantzin” made by a missionary “to make the indigenous people fall to the Guadalupana devotion. That is totally false.”
“There is no signal in that regard,” he said, and said that “especially in a time where the Holy Inquisition is and everything else, to any missionary who came in a cosmic battle against the devil would have occurred to him to do something similar as an alliance with the idolatry, with Satan.”
The Mexican priest said that “it does not come from Extremadura, Spain”, as others suggest, which theorize that it is an adaptation made by the evangelizers of the invocation of the Virgin of Guadalupe that is venerated in the Royal Franciscan monastery of Santa María de Guadalupe, in Extremadura.
This, he stressed, “we verify it when we see so many documents where they are the same Spaniards, specifically the Franciscans, the first Franciscans, who do not want the Virgen del Tepeyac very well, they even want to remove the name.”
“It is not they who brought to Extremadura,” he says, remembering that Fray Bernardino de Sahagún, an important Franciscan missionary of Spanish origin, came to fear that it is a “satanic invention” of the indigenous people.
For Father Chávez, if in truth the Virgin of Guadalupe appeared in the Tepeyac was an adaptation of Extremadura “never a Spaniard would have said something similar to the Virgen del Tepeyac, so it is neither of the idol, it is not even from Spain, it is a true appearance in the Tepeyac, Mexico.”
“She came with Jesus Christ our Lord in her Immaculate belly, to give us salvation, to redeem us, to give us her mercy and her love through her mother, Santa María de Guadalupe,” he concluded.
David Ramos
Graduate in Communication Sciences by the Private University of the North in Trujillo, Peru. With more than 12 years of experience in Catholic journalism working in ACI Press, I am based in Mexico since 2018. I have covered the trips of Pope Francis to Ecuador, Paraguay, Mexico, Colombia, Chile, Peru and Panama.