40 Fun Facts About Our Lady of Guadalupe

What did an attacker hide in a flower arrangement beneath the image of Our Lady of Guadalupe in 1921?

A bomb went off at the altar, bending a brass crucifix and breaking windows, yet the image on the cloak was unharmed. The twisted crucifix is kept at the shrine as a relic.

What carries pilgrims beneath the image of Our Lady of Guadalupe in her Mexico City basilica so nobody lingers?

Moving walkways run under the altar, gliding visitors past the framed cloak so that everyone gets a close look. The image itself hangs behind the altar beneath a large cross.

Which flowers, out of season in midwinter, did Juan Diego carry to the bishop as the sign from Our Lady of Guadalupe?

Roses of Castile, a Spanish variety not native to Mexico, are what Juan Diego is said to have found blooming on the barren hilltop. They spilled from his cloak to reveal the image.

On which date do millions of pilgrims crowd Mexico City's basilica for the feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe?

December 12 marks the day the image is said to have appeared on Juan Diego's cloak. Many pilgrims walk for days to reach the basilica in time for the feast.

Which explorer named the Caribbean island of Guadeloupe after the older shrine of Our Lady of Guadalupe in Spain?

Christopher Columbus named the island in 1493, having visited the Spanish monastery to give thanks after his first voyage. The Mexican devotion took the same name nearly four decades later.

Which Mexican birthday song do famous singers perform for Our Lady of Guadalupe on the eve of her feast?

Las Mañanitas is traditionally sung early in the morning to wake someone on their birthday, so the Virgin gets the same serenade a loved one would.

Our Lady of Guadalupe is said to have appeared in 1531, a decade after Hernán Cortés conquered which people?

The Aztecs lost their island capital, Tenochtitlan, to Cortés and his indigenous allies in 1521. The apparition story unfolds on the edge of the Spanish city built over it.

Which rebel priest began Mexico's War of Independence in 1810 with an image of Our Lady of Guadalupe as his banner?

Miguel Hidalgo took an image of the Virgin at Atotonilco and fixed it to a lance, giving his rebel army its banner. His troops also wore prints of her on their hats.

Which pope flew to Mexico City to canonize Juan Diego, the visionary of Our Lady of Guadalupe?

John Paul II made Juan Diego the first indigenous saint of the Americas at a Mass in the basilica itself. He had beatified him in the same building in 1990.

On which hill north of old Mexico City did Juan Diego report meeting Our Lady of Guadalupe at dawn?

Tepeyac now lies inside the city's northernmost borough, with the basilica at its foot. A chapel on the summit recalls the first meeting and the midwinter flowers.

What is the indigenous name for the plant-fibre cloak that bears the image of Our Lady of Guadalupe?

Tilma is short for tilmahtli, an everyday men's cloak that was often used as a carry-all. Juan Diego is said to have gathered his flowers in it.

Which dying relative of Juan Diego was reported cured after his own vision of Our Lady of Guadalupe?

His uncle, Juan Bernardino, said the Virgin appeared at his bedside, healed him and gave Guadalupe as her title. Juan Diego had been hurrying to fetch him a priest.

In the image of Our Lady of Guadalupe on Juan Diego's cloak, what is the Virgin standing on?

A crescent moon, now dark, lies under her feet; examiners in 1666 noted that silver added to it had already faded. Golden rays surround the whole figure.

Which golden shapes are scattered across the blue-green mantle worn by Our Lady of Guadalupe in the famous image?

Stars cover the gold-edged mantle, which she wears over a dress ornamented with a floral design and tied with a dark ribbon.

Which winged figure holds up the Virgin from below in the image of Our Lady of Guadalupe?

An angel supports her, and its wings are said to recall one of the major gods of the region's older religion.

Guadalupe Victoria, who renamed himself for Our Lady of Guadalupe, was the first holder of which Mexican office?

President is the office: born with the surnames Fernández y Félix, he took Guadalupe for the Virgin and Victoria for victory while fighting for independence.

Which war ended with an 1848 treaty signed in the town around the shrine of Our Lady of Guadalupe?

The Mexican–American War ended in a treaty named for the town, which cost Mexico more than half its territory. It was signed after U.S. troops had taken the capital.

Which labor leader led California farmworkers on a 1966 march to Sacramento behind a banner of Our Lady of Guadalupe?

Cesar Chavez cast the long walk from Delano as a pilgrimage and act of penance, and finished part of it leaning on a cane. Marchers also carried crucifixes.

Mexico's party season, jokingly called a marathon, runs from the feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe to which holiday?

Epiphany on January 6, Mexico's day of the Three Wise Men, closes the Guadalupe-Reyes Marathon, a nickname from the 1990s for weeks of back-to-back feasting.

In which language, Juan Diego's mother tongue, is Our Lady of Guadalupe said to have spoken to him?

Nahuatl was the language of the fallen empire, and the account of the apparitions traditionally held to be the oldest was written in it rather than in Spanish.

Which first bishop of Mexico is said to have watched the image of Our Lady of Guadalupe appear on a peasant's cloak?

Juan de Zumárraga kept the cloak in his private chapel before it went on public display. Oddly, none of his many surviving writings mentions the event.

In which region of Spain stands the medieval monastery whose Virgin first bore the title Our Lady of Guadalupe?

Extremadura's shrine was the most important Marian sanctuary in the medieval kingdom of Castile, and its monastery is now a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

Which shape did architects give the modern Basilica of Our Lady of Guadalupe so the image is visible from every seat?

Circular and free of interior columns, the building was meant to recall the tent that sheltered the Ark of the Covenant in the desert. Its roof is clad in green copper.

Why was the Old Basilica of Our Lady of Guadalupe, opened in 1709, replaced by a new church in the 1970s?

It was sinking into unstable ground and could no longer hold the growing crowds. The replacement stands on 344 control piles to stop the same thing happening again.

Our Lady of Guadalupe's visionary Juan Diego was born Cuauhtlatoatzin, a name usually translated as the talking what?

Eagle is the root of his birth name; he became Juan Diego when he was baptised at about fifty by one of Mexico's first missionaries.

Friar Sahagún complained that pilgrims to Our Lady of Guadalupe called her by which older goddess's title?

Tonantzin means Our Mother, and Sahagún wrote that a temple to her had stood on the same hill. He suspected the old worship was carrying on under a new name.

Which Mexican Revolution leader's peasant army carried banners of Our Lady of Guadalupe when it entered Mexico City?

Emiliano Zapata fought mainly for land reform, yet his southern farmers marched under the Virgin's image and tucked pictures of Mary into their hats for protection.

Spain's wooden statue of Our Lady of Guadalupe is reputed to have been carved by which Gospel writer?

Luke is the evangelist credited in legend, which adds that fleeing priests buried the statue in the hills when Seville fell to the Moors.

A 1648 book by Miguel Sánchez matched the image of Our Lady of Guadalupe to a woman in which biblical book?

Revelation describes a woman clothed with the sun, and Sánchez's book, the first printed account of the apparitions, cast the Virgin as that figure.

In the image of Our Lady of Guadalupe, the dark sash tied above the waist is read as a sign of what?

Pregnancy is the usual reading of the black girdle, which is why she is widely invoked as a patroness of unborn children.

Researchers have claimed that tiny human figures are reflected in which part of the image of Our Lady of Guadalupe?

Her eyes are said to hold reflections of the people in the room when the cloak was first unrolled, though critics compare the shapes to inkblots.

Which victor of the Alamo is buried in the hilltop cemetery beside the Basilica of Our Lady of Guadalupe?

Santa Anna rests in the colonial-era graveyard above the shrine beside his wife. Decades earlier he had given his own amputated leg a burial with full military honors.

Which U.S. state capital holds the country's oldest church dedicated to Our Lady of Guadalupe, built of adobe?

Santa Fe's Santuario de Guadalupe dates from around 1795, and its altar screen of the Virgin was hauled up from Mexico City in pieces along the Camino Real.

During which 1920s Mexican conflict was the image of Our Lady of Guadalupe secretly swapped for a painted copy?

The Cristero War followed the suspension of public worship in 1926, so the original was hidden for safekeeping until 1929. Visitors saw a stand-in the whole time.

Which early account of Our Lady of Guadalupe, attributed to Antonio Valeriano, has a title meaning Here Is Recounted?

Nican Mopohua survives in a 16-page manuscript dated to about 1556, which is now kept at the New York Public Library.

Which architect of Mexico's National Museum of Anthropology co-designed the modern Basilica of Our Lady of Guadalupe?

Pedro Ramírez Vázquez shared the commission with José Luis Benlliure and four other designers. He also co-designed Mexico City's Estadio Azteca, stage of two World Cup finals.

Which pope approved the canonical coronation of the image of Our Lady of Guadalupe, carried out in 1895?

Leo XIII issued the decree in 1887, and the crowning followed on October 12, 1895. By then a crown once painted on the Virgin's head had been erased from the image.

Which leading painter of New Spain studied the image of Our Lady of Guadalupe and published Maravilla Americana?

Miguel Cabrera was allowed to copy the cloak in 1752, and one of his copies went to Pope Benedict XIV. In his lifetime he was regarded as the viceroyalty's greatest painter.

Which religious order, the first keepers of the chapel, denounced devotion to Our Lady of Guadalupe in a 1556 sermon?

Franciscans feared that converts believed the painting itself worked miracles. The archbishop, a Dominican, backed the devotion and took the shrine out of their hands.

Which Spanish singer, Mexico's Queen of Rancheras, has ashes in a crypt at the Basilica of Our Lady of Guadalupe?

Rocío Dúrcal died in Madrid in 2006; part of her ashes stayed in Spain and the rest went to the basilica, where her husband's were later placed beside hers.