Juan Diego

Juan Diego Cuauhtlatoatzin, also known simply as Juan Diego (1474–1548), was a Chichimec peasant and Marian visionary.

He and his wife, María Lucía, were among the first to be baptized after the arrival of the main group of twelve Franciscan missionaries in Mexico in 1524.

His wife died two years before the apparitions, although one source (Luis Becerra Tanco, possibly through inadvertence) claims she died two years after them.

There is no firm tradition as to their marital relations.

It is variously reported (a) that after their baptism he and his wife were inspired by a sermon on Chastity to live celibately; alternatively (b) that they lived celibately throughout their marriage; and in the further alternative (c) that both of them lived and died as virgins.

Alternatives (a) and (b) may not necessarily conflict with other reports that Juan Diego (possibly by another wife) had a son.

Intrinsic to the narrative is Juan Diego's uncle, Juan Bernardino; but beyond him, María Lucía, and Juan Diego's putative son, no other family members are mentioned in the tradition.

He is said to have been granted apparitions of Our Lady of Guadalupe on four occasions in December 1531: three at the hill of Tepeyac and a fourth before don Juan de Zumárraga, then bishop of Mexico.

The Basilica of Our Lady of Guadalupe, located at the foot of Tepeyac, houses the cloak (tilmahtli) that is traditionally said to be Juan Diego's, and upon which the image of the Virgin is said to have been miraculously impressed as proof of the authenticity of the apparitions.

Juan Diego's visions and the imparting of the miraculous image, as recounted in oral and written colonial sources such as the Huei tlamahuiçoltica , are together known as the Guadalupe event (el acontecimiento Guadalupano), and are the basis of the veneration of Our Lady of Guadalupe.

This veneration is ubiquitous in Mexico, prevalent throughout the Spanish-speaking Americas, and increasingly widespread beyond.

The precise dates in December 1531 (as given below) were not recorded in the Nican Mopohua, but are taken from the chronology first established by Mateo de la Cruz in 1660.

Juan Diego, as a devout neophyte, was in the habit of regularly walking from his home to the Franciscan mission station at Tlatelolco for religious instruction and to perform his religious duties.

His route passed by the hill at Tepeyac.

At dawn on Saturday December 9, 1531, while on his usual journey, he encountered the Virgin Mary who revealed herself as the ever-virgin Mother of God and instructed him to request the bishop to erect a chapel in her honour so that she might relieve the distress of all those who call on her in their need.

He delivered the request, but was told by the bishop (Fray Juan Zumárraga) to come back another day after he had had time to reflect upon what Juan Diego had told him.

Later the same day: returning to Tepeyac, Juan Diego encountered the Virgin again and announced the failure of his mission, suggesting that because he was "a back-frame, a tail, a wing, a man of no importance" she would do better to recruit someone of greater standing, but she insisted that he was whom she wanted for the task.

Juan Diego agreed to return to the bishop to repeat his request.

This he did on the morning of Sunday, December 10, when he found the bishop more compliant.

The bishop, however, asked for a sign to prove that the apparition was truly of heaven.

Juan Diego returned immediately to Tepeyac and, encountering the Virgin Mary reported the bishop's request for a sign; she condescended to provide one on the following day (December 11).

By Monday, December 11, however, Juan Diego's uncle Juan Bernardino had fallen sick and Juan Diego was obliged to attend to him.

In the very early hours of Tuesday, December 12, Juan Bernardino's condition having deteriorated overnight, Juan Diego set out to Tlatelolco to get a priest to hear Juan Bernardino's confession and minister to him on his death-bed.

The date of death (in his 74th year) is given as 1548.

If correctly dated to the 16th century, the Codex Escalada – which portrays one of the apparitions and states that Juan Diego (identified by his indigenous name) died "worthily" in 1548 – must be accounted among the earliest and clearest of such notices.

After the annals, a number of publications arose:

The earliest notices of an apparition of the Virgin Mary at Tepeyac to an indigenous man are to be found in various annals which are regarded by Dr. Miguel León-Portilla, one of the leading Mexican scholars in this field, as demonstrating "that effectively many people were already flocking to the chapel of Tepeyac long before 1556, and that the tradition of Juan Diego and the apparitions of Tonantzin (Guadalupe) had already spread."

Others (including leading Nahuatl and Guadalupe scholars in the USA) go only as far as saying that such notices "are few, brief, ambiguous and themselves posterior by many years".

The following account is based on that given in the Nican mopohua which was first published in Nahuatl in 1649 as part of a compendious work known as the Huei tlamahuiçoltica.

No part of that work was available in Spanish until 1895 when, as part of the celebrations for the coronation of the image of the Virgin of Guadalupe in that year, there was published a translation of the Nican Mopohua dating from the 18th century.

This translation, however, was made from an incomplete copy of the original.

Nor was any part of the Huei tlamahuiçoltica republished until 1929, when a facsimile of the original was published by Primo Feliciano Velásquez together with a full translation into Spanish (including the first full translation of the Nican Mopohua), since then the Nican Mopohua, in its various translations and redactions, has supplanted all other versions as the narrative of preference.

He was beatified in 1990 and canonized in 2002 by Pope John Paul II, who on both occasions traveled to Mexico City to preside over the ceremonies.

According to major sources, Juan Diego was born in 1474 in Cuauhtitlan, and at the time of the apparitions he lived there or in Tolpetlac.

Although not destitute, he was neither rich nor influential.

His religious fervor, his artlessness, his respectful but gracious demeanour towards the Virgin Mary and the initially skeptical Bishop Juan de Zumárraga, as well as his devotion to his sick uncle and, subsequently, to the Virgin at her shrine – all of which are central to the tradition – are among his defining characteristics and testify to the sanctity of life which is the indispensable criterion for canonization.

As a result, the Basilica of Our Lady of Guadalupe is now one of the world's major Christian pilgrimage destinations, receiving 22 million visitors in 2010.

Juan Diego is the first Catholic saint indigenous to the Americas.

At least two 18th-century nuns claimed to be descended from Juan Diego.

After the apparitions, Juan Diego was permitted to live next to the hermitage erected at the foot of the hill of Tepeyac, and he dedicated the rest of his life to serving the Virgin Mary at the shrine erected in accordance with her wishes.