5. Image of the Virgin Mary Appears on Cloak
On December 9, 1531, a peasant in Mexico City, Juan Diego, saw the vision of a woman on Tepeyac Hill. The woman identified herself as the Virgin Mary and asked that a church be built on that site. Juan Diego relayed the message to Archbishop Juan de Zumarraga, who in turn, instructed the peasant to ask the lady for a miraculous sign. That Juan did, and the Lady responded by healing Juan’s uncle and ordering Juan to collect flowers from the top of the hill. Juan climbed the hill in fulfillment of the request despite its seeming strangeness; the hill of Tepeyac was usually barren in December. To his surprise, at the top of the hill, he found Castilian roses, which were not native to Mexico. Juan took some of these flowers, wrapped them in his cloak, and proceeded to see the archbishop. At the meeting, when Juan Diego opened his cloak, the archbishop was shocked to see the image of the Virgin of Guadalupe imprinted on the cloak’s fabric. Today, the image is an iconic one, and in 2002, Juan Diego was declared a saint by the Church.
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