St. Juan Diego

St. Juan Diego was born in 1474, before the Spanish conquest, near what is now Mexico City, an indigenous man of the Chichimec people whose native name was Cuauhtlatoatzin, and died in 1548. A convert to the Catholic faith, he was a poor and devout layman when, in December 1531, on the hill of Tepeyac, the Blessed Virgin Mary appeared to him as a pregnant native woman, speaking to him tenderly in his own tongue and asking that a church be built on that spot.

When the bishop asked for a sign, Mary sent Juan Diego to gather roses blooming out of season and to carry them in his tilma (cloak); when he opened it before the bishop, the roses fell out and there appeared, imprinted on the rough cloth, the miraculous image of Our Lady of Guadalupe. That image, still venerated today, sparked the conversion of millions of the native peoples of the Americas. Canonized in 2002 by Pope St. John Paul II, Juan Diego is honored as the first indigenous saint of the Americas.