Our Lady of Guadalupe
Patron of the Americas, Mexico, the unborn
In December 1531, ten years after the Spanish conquest of Mexico, the Virgin Mary appeared on the hill of Tepeyac, outside Mexico City, to Juan Diego, a middle-aged Indigenous convert. She spoke to him tenderly in his own Nahuatl language and asked that a church be built on that spot. When Juan Diego took her request to Bishop Juan de Zumárraga, the bishop asked for a sign.