Portal:Mexico/Selected biography/8

St. Juan Diego Cuauhtlatoatzin (1474–1548), commonly referred to as Juan Diego, is the first Roman Catholic indigenous American saint. He is said to have been granted an apparition of the Virgin Mary on four separate occasions in December 1531 at the hill of Tepeyac, then outside but now well within metropolitan Mexico City. The Basilica of Guadalupe located at the foot of the hill of Tepeyac claims to possess Juan Diego's mantle or cloak (known as a tilma) on which an image of the Virgin is said to have been impressed by a miracle as a pledge of the authenticity of the apparitions. These apparitions and the imparting of the miraculous image (together known as the Guadalupe event, in Spanish "el acontecimiento Guadalupano") are the basis of the cult of Our Lady of Guadalupe which is ubiquitous in Mexico, prevalent throughout the Spanish-speaking Americas, and increasingly widespread beyond. As a result, the Basilica of Guadalupe is now the world's major centre of pilgrimage for Roman Catholics, receiving 22 million visitors in 2010, the vast bulk of whom were pilgrims. Juan Diego was beatified in 1990, and canonized in 2002. More ...