Pope Francis and his deep devotion to the Virgin of Guadalupe

Pope Francis, long before his pontificate began, had a deep devotion to Our Lady of Guadalupe and his seer, San Juan Diego Cuauhtlatzin.

This is especially recalling Mexican priest Eduardo Chávez, considered the greatest expert in the appearances of the Virgin of Guadalupe.

Speaking to ACI Press on April 22, Fr. Chávez, who was a postulator of the cause of canonization of San Juan Diego Cuauhtlatzin and today directs the Higher Institute of Guadalupanos Studies (ISEG), recalled that he met the then Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio in appearance (Brazil), on the occasion of the V General Conference of the Latin American Episcopate and the Caribbean May 2007.

The late Pontiff was at that time the archbishop of Buenos Aires (Argentina), and within the framework of the conference he had the role of president of the Drafting Commission of the Drafting of the Drafting of the Final Document of Aparecida.

“In Apartida we agree at the same hotel and talk so much about the Virgin of Guadalupe, of the Tilma, of the image, of the most important meanings,” said Father Chávez. “It was very beautiful to be able to talk about the Virgin of Guadalupe, but it was she who also made a very great closeness.”

“He, in fact, had already written a very beautiful letter of thanks when I was a postulator of the cause of canonization of San Juan Diego, precisely for bringing the cause and leading to the point of the canonization to San Juan Diego,” he said.

Father Chávez recalled that the conclusive document of Aparecida mentions on several occasions to the Virgin of Guadalupe, whom the Latin American bishops trusted “the new impulse that springs from today in all of Latin America and the Caribbean, under the breath of the new Pentecost for our Church.”

Cardinal Bergoglio and the first parish dedicated to Juan Diego out of Mexico

San Juan Diego Cuauhtlatzin was canonized by San Juan Pablo II on July 31, 2002. Just two days laterat a mass held in Buenos Aires, then Cardinal Bergoglio proclaimed the seer of the Virgin of Guadalupe as a patron of the florists, and said that “there was no more beautiful flowers than those that God gave him, through the Virgin of Guadalupe, San Juan Diego Cuauhtlatzin”.

In December of that same year, the San Juan Diego Missionary Center in Villa Lugano, south of the Argentine capital.

In 2007, Cardinal Bergoglio converted that missionary center into the San Juan Diego parish – the first dedicated to the holy seer outside Mexico – but the liturgical celebrations were held in a multipurpose room. The plan to build the temple was developing until its inauguration and consecration was completed on May 1, 2015, when the archbishop of Buenos Aires had already become the first Argentine Pope.

In the Archdiocesan bulletin that announcement Consecration reads “a dream has come true in the parish San Juan Diego (…) First was the tent, then the saloncito, and now the temple.”

The temple was enshrined by the then Primado Archbishop of Mexico, Cardinal Norberto Rivera, invitation to the successor of Pope Francis at the head of the Archdiocese of Buenos Aires, Cardinal Mario Aurelio Poli.

Fr. Eduardo Chávez was also present at that ceremony, accompanied by the then rector of the Basilica of Guadalupe, Mons. Enrique Glennie Graue, and a delegation of Mexican Catholics.

“We were there in Buenos Aires and we certainly learned of this temple since the Holy Father taught us the photographs of how the construction was going until it ended. He was so excited, so happy that he had done. It was his last work, let’s say thus, constructive in Buenos Aires,” said Fr. Chávez.

However, he stressed, “I would say that it was the total and full start in her pontificate, because the Virgin of Guadalupe always always accompanied him.”

Pope Francis and his request to Mexico: to pray “A little while alone” before the Virgin of Guadalupe

In an interview with the missing Notimex agency in February 2016, a few days after embarking on his trip to Mexico, Pope Francis said that when he was “fear of a problem or that something ugly has happened and one does not know how to react, and I pray, I like to repeat myself: ‘Do not be afraid, are I not here that I am your mother?’ They are words of her: ‘You are not afraid.’

In that same interview, Pope Francis asked the Mexicans “as a favor (…) that this time, that it will be the third that floor Mexican soil, leave me a little while only in front of the image.”

That desire would fulfill it on February 13, 2016, when praying for 20 minutes at the Camarín of the Basilica of Guadalupe in Mexico City before the original image miraculously printed on the Tilma of San Juan Diego almost 500 years ago.

The Pope, said Fr. Chávez, “he did not even realize all the time he already had praying in front of the Virgin of Guadalupe and all there in the Basilica of Guadalupe we were observing this relationship so wonderful, so intimate, so great of the Virgin of Guadalupe and the Supreme Pontiff.”

“When I visited him later in Rome asking him to bless me a Tepeyac stone for the Higher Institute of Guadalupanos Studies. He was really, not only delighted, he was ecstatic with the stone, that he was left over and touched and touched her, and blessed it.”

For Father Chávez, “the Virgin of Guadalupe was inspiration, motive, strength, vibrating from her heart and her soul in Jesus, good shepherd, to be that pastor so simple, so humble, so full of closeness from heart to heart.”

Almost every December 12 during his pontificate, Pope Francis celebrated a Mass specially dedicated to Our Lady of Guadalupe in the Basilica of San Pedro in the Vatican.