By J.D. Long-García | July 2, 2009 | The Catholic Sun

Perhaps the most significant image in the history of the Western Hemisphere continues to puzzle scientists and inspire the faithful 478 years after it first appeared.

The image of Our Lady of Guadalupe can be found in churches, on T-shirts, car windows and even tattooed on arms, but it first appeared on the tilma, or cloak, of a peasant. 

The Blessed Mother told the peasant, St. Juan Diego, to relay a message to the local bishop, Juan de Zumarraga, the first bishop of Mexico. She wanted a church built for her on a hill called Tepeyac.

When Bishop Zumarraga questioned Juan Diego’s claims, Our Lady of Guadalupe appeared to Juan Diego again. Eventually, on Dec. 12, 1531, she instructed him to gather flowers from the top of the hill, place them in his tilma and present them to the bishop.

Juan Diego found Castilian roses, which the Spanish bishop would recognize. The peasant presented the flowers to Bishop Zumarraga, who was at first surprised to see roses in the dead of winter.

Then, looking at Juan Diego’s cloak, he saw the image of Our Lady of Guadalupe. The roses appeared to have left an image on the cactus-fiber cloak. The cloak, which should have disintegrated centuries ago, still resides in a church built for the Blessed Mother on Tepeyac.

Tangible evidence

But a piece of the tilma — the only known Guadalupe relic in the Americas — will be on display during the Knights of Columbus-sponsored Guadalupe Festival Aug. 8 at Jobing.com Arena. Tickets are free, but should be obtained in advanced.

“To me, [the tilma] is a very tangible evidence that what the Church teaches is true,” said Richard Jeffrey, who’s heading up the local effort to organize the Guadalupe Festival.

“It’s practical,” he added. “It’s something that I think our Lord planned for the Americas because we’re just such practical people.”

The festival will feature speakers like Immaculée Ilibagiza, who survived the 1994 Rwandan genocide clutching a rosary, and Eduardo Verástegui, star of the pro-life film “Bella.”

Carl Anderson, Supreme Knight of the Knights of Columbus, as well as Bishop Thomas J. Olmsted and Cardinal H.E. Norberto Rivera of the Archdiocese of Mexico City will also speak. Msgr. Eduardo Chávez Sánchez, postulator of the Cause for Canonization of St. Juan Diego, will share his expertise as well.

“It’s going to be the largest festival that’s ever happened in honor of Our Lady in Phoenix,” said Jeffrey, who is also involved with Rosary Sunday planning. “If you want to attend the festival, you better get your order in now.”

Festival participants will also see musical performances from In Ipsa, Dana and Filippa Giordano. Yet Jeffrey, who escorted the relic around Arizona in 2003 with other members of the Knights of Columbus, said venerating the one-inch piece of the tilma will be the event’s highlight.

“Every one of us in the New World can look at that event and see that it’s the basis of faith in the Americas,” he said.

Providential presence

In the 1920s and ’30s, the Mexican government persecuted the Church in that country. The Knights of Columbus supported the Church, educating seminarians in the United States. Some members were martyred.

In thanksgiving for the support of the U.S. Church, the archbishop of Mexico City gave the one-inch relic to the Archdiocese of Los Angeles in 1941.

After John Paul II canonized Juan Diego in 2003, the Apostolate for Holy Relics took the small cloth on a tour across the United States. Jeffrey and the Arizona Knights of Columbus accompanied the relic here, driving to different churches in a red-and-gray 15-passenger van. 

“It was magnificent. The veneration of the faithful was just incredible,” Jeffrey said of the four-day tour in November 2003.

“People were coming in with pictures of their loved ones that were serving in Iraq,” he said. “They came sometimes with tears of joy to be in the presence of the Mother of God.”

He noted that Our Lady of Guadalupe is different from other Marian apparitions in that she left her image behind. Jeffrey also saw having the relic here as providential since the diocese was going through a time of transition.

Ignacio Rodriguez, associate director of the Department of Ethnic Ministries, noted that John Paul II declared Our of Guadalupe the patroness of the Americas.

“He did that because he saw her as the protectress, the queen of the Americas,” he said, adding that she is also the patroness of the Diocese of Phoenix. “There’s a hope that she can continue to inspire conversion in those people who don’t know Jesus Christ yet.”

“The evangelization made possible by Our Lady of Guadalupe was later enriched with the migration of Irish, Italian, Germany and Polish Catholics to North America,” said Eduardo Quiroga Xibillé, a Guadalupe expert in Mexico City.

He noted that by choosing Columbus, the Irish founders of the Knights of Columbus recognized a new Catholicism in America. Our Lady of Guadalupe is the birth of Christianity in the Americas, so she’s a fitting apparition for the Knights of Columbus’ First International Marian Congress.

“We’re rather like the tilma,” Jeffrey said of the Knights of Columbus. “We’re like withered cactus fibers. Individually we can do something, but woven together as an order we can do a lot more.”