Our Lady of Guadalupe

The story in Nahuatl

The best known telling is the Nican Mopohua, a sixteen page manuscript in Nahuatl, the language of the Aztecs. It has been dated to 1556 and was bought by the New York Public Library in 1883. Its author was probably Antonio Valeriano, an Aztec man taught by Franciscan friars. The text describes four appearances of Mary to Juan Diego, a Chichimec peasant, and one to his uncle, Juan Bernardino. It was later printed in a pamphlet that circulated widely from 1649. The same story also appears in a 17th century collection called the Huei tlamahuiçoltica.

What the account says

The account begins on the morning of 9 December 1531, when Juan Diego saw a young woman on Tepeyac Hill. Speaking Nahuatl, she said she was the mother of the true God and asked for a church there. The archbishop of Mexico City, Juan de Zumárraga, did not believe him. On 10 December she told him to keep asking, and later agreed to give a sign. His uncle fell ill on the 11th, and early on the 12th Juan Diego set off to find a priest. She met him on the road, said his uncle was well, and sent him to cut flowers from the bare hilltop.

The image and shrine

When Juan Diego opened his cloak before the archbishop, the flowers fell out and a picture of the woman was seen on the cloth. That cloak, a tilmahtli, is still kept in the Basilica of Our Lady of Guadalupe at Tepeyac, in Mexico City. The figure is shown expecting a child, eyes lowered and hands joined, in a pink dress and a blue mantle marked with stars, over a dark moon, with an angel below. Pope Leo XIII ordered the image crowned in 1887, and the rite was carried out in 1895. Pope Paul VI made the shrine a minor basilica in 1976. No other Catholic shrine receives as many visitors.

The shrine in Spain

Long before 1531, a shrine to a Mary known as Guadalupe stood in the town of Guadalupe, in Cáceres, Extremadura, and it was the chief Marian shrine of medieval Castile. Its dark statue, kept by the Monastery of Santa María de Guadalupe, was said to have been made by Luke the Evangelist and sent by Pope Gregory I to Leander, archbishop of Seville. Legend says priests buried it when the Moors took Seville in 712. In the early 1300s a cowboy, Gil Cordero, reported a vision and told priests to dig; they found the statue and built the shrine that grew into the monastery. Many conquistadors came from the town.

Questions about the record

Sixteenth century Mexico saw sharp disagreement among clergy. In 1556 the archbishop, Alonso de Montúfar, praised devotion to the image in a sermon; days later the Franciscan Francisco de Bustamante preached against it. An inquiry followed, and witnesses said the picture had been painted by an Indian, one naming Marcos, perhaps Marcos Cipac de Aquino. Nothing written by Zumárraga supports the story, though he wrote a great deal. The Codex Escalada, a parchment said to date from 1548, was found in 1995; historians Alberto Peralta and Stafford Poole doubted it. Bernardino de Sahagún attacked the cult in the 1570s and noted the older name Tonantzin, Our Mother, used at Tepeyac.

How Our Lady of Guadalupe is kept

Catholics, above all in Mexico, keep 12 December as her feast. Many travel to the basilica at Tepeyac, where the cloak and its picture are kept and shown, and where the account of the apparitions is read and retold. The story is remembered step by step: the visions of December 1531, the roses cut from the bare hill, the picture seen on the cloak, and the procession of 26 December 1531 that carried the image to a first small chapel.

When and where

The feast is 12 December. The account places the apparitions between 9 and 12 December 1531, and those days are kept in the same month. The image was crowned on 12 October 1895, and the shrine was made a minor basilica on 6 October 1976.

Mexico is the home of the devotion, and the image rests in the basilica at Tepeyac, on the edge of Mexico City. The title and an older shrine come from the town of Guadalupe in Extremadura, Spain. Popes have named her patroness of Mexico City, New Spain, Latin America, the Philippines, the Americas and Cebu.

What Our Lady of Guadalupe means

For those who keep the devotion, the picture is far more than a painting. The woman is shown expecting a child, at prayer, with the sun behind her and the moon beneath her feet. The account says she spoke to a poor man in his own language and called herself his mother, and the sentence remembered over the basilica door is taken as a promise that she is near. Because the story was written in Nahuatl, many Mexican Catholics hear in this title a claim of belonging as well as a matter of faith.

Our Lady of Guadalupe dates: 2026, 2027, 2028

Questions people ask about Our Lady of Guadalupe

See also

CandlemasA Christian feast of candle blessings marking the end of the Christmas seasonHoly Week in SevilleA week of solemn processions and floats through the streets of Seville to mark the Passion of Christ.Camino de SantiagoA Christian walking pilgrimage across Europe to the shrine of Saint James in SpainBotafumeiroA giant swinging censer of brass and silver that fills the Santiago de Compostela Cathedral with incense during solemn f

Good reading and sources

• Encyclopaedia BritannicaArticle
• BBC NEWS | UK | In PicturesBBC, Article
• A New Way to Show Your Devotion in Mexico City: Wear a T-ShirtSmithsonian Magazine, Article
• BBC NEWS | UK | In PicturesBBC, Article
• A New Way to Show Your Devotion in Mexico City: Wear a T-ShirtSmithsonian Magazine, Article

• Our Lady of Guadalupe on WikipediaEncyclopedia
• More photos on Wikimedia CommonsPhotos and video
• Wikidata recordOpen data

It may contain mistakes. Traditions differ from one family, village and community to the next, and the people who keep them know them best. If something is wrong, tell us. Last refreshed 2026-10-10.