Novena to Our Lady of Guadalupe

Our Lady of Guadalupe is the central Marian devotion of the Spanish-speaking Catholic world and one of the most powerful Marian apparitions in the Church's history. On December 9, 1531 — ten years after the Spanish conquest of Mexico, in a moment of profound cultural and spiritual upheaval — the Blessed Virgin Mary appeared on the hill of Tepeyac to St. Juan Diego Cuauhtlatoatzin, a recently-converted Nahua peasant. Speaking in his native Nahuatl, Mary identified herself as 'la perfecta siempre Virgen Santa María, Madre del verdaderísimo Dios' and asked that a church be built on the hill. After the local bishop, Juan de Zumárraga, requested a sign, Mary instructed Juan Diego on December 12 to gather roses from the frozen hilltop and carry them in his tilma (cloak) to the bishop. When Juan Diego opened the tilma before the bishop, the roses tumbled out and an image of Mary appeared miraculously imprinted on the cloth — a young pregnant woman in indigenous dress, wearing the maternity sash of Nahua custom, surrounded by sunburst rays and standing on a crescent moon, an angel at her feet. This is the image preserved to this day in the Basilica of Our Lady of Guadalupe in Mexico City, one of the most-visited Catholic shrines in the world. The narrative — known as the Nican Mopohua, recorded in Nahuatl shortly after the events — has been studied by historians, scientists, and pilgrims for nearly five centuries; the tilma's preservation defies natural explanation (it should have decomposed within twenty years but remains intact after 490). Pope St. John Paul II canonized Juan Diego in 2002 in the Basilica itself, becoming the first canonization of an indigenous American. Mary is honored as Empress of the Americas, Patroness of the unborn, and the Star of the New Evangelization. The devotion has profound resonance in Mexico, throughout Latin America, and in the US Hispanic Catholic community, and is particularly invoked for pregnancy, the protection of children, and the conversion of cultures.