SW News: Pope Francis presided over Mass in St. Peter’s Basilica on December 12, the Feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe. In his homily, the Holy Father connected the apparitions of Our Lady of Guadalupe to our troubled times. He recalled the rumbling of war; growing injustice, famine, poverty, and suffering which make our horizon seem bleak and disconcerting.

The pope also recalled the launch on Monday of an intercontinental novena to Our Lady of Guadalupe in the Americas, to prepare for the 5th centenary of the Guadalupian apparitions, in 2031. He urged all believers to participate in this celebratory journey that aims to promote an encounter with God through Our Lady of Guadalupe, for the renewal of the social and ecclesial fabric of these peoples and communities.

The Virgin Mary, according to Pope Francis, "came to accompany the American people on this hard road of socio-economic colonialism and cultural imperialism."

During the war between the Spanish and the indigenous peoples in 1531, St. Juan Diego saw the Virgin of Guadalupe on the Hill of Tepeyac in Mexico City. When Mother Mary first came to St Diego, she adopted the appearance of a pregnant local woman and talked in Nahuatl, the language of the indigenous people. The Pope explained that the Virgin Mary is still among us now, just as she was nearly 500 years ago when she appeared to the indigenous people of Mexico.

“Today as yesterday, Our Lady of Guadalupe wants to meet us too as she did one day with Juan Diego on the hill of Tepeyac. She wants to stay with us. She begs us to allow her to be our mother, to open our lives to her Son Jesus and to welcome his message so as to learn to love like him,” the Holy Father said. The Pope concluded by asking the Lord Jesus to offer everyone days of joy and peace so that the Lord's peace may reside inside us and within the hearts of all men and women of goodwill.

Our Lady instructed St Diego to seek the bishop for permission to erect a church on the location of the apparition. After being initially turned away by the bishop, he went back to the location and pleaded with Our Lady to send a sign to confirm the veracity of Her word. Even though it was winter, She told him to collect the Castilian roses blossoming on the mountainside and give them to the Spanish bishop. The flowers were stuffed into Juan Diego's tilma, or cloak.

When he unfurled his tilma and the roses cascaded out, everyone was astonished to find a beautiful image of Our Lady on the cloak. The miraculous image of Diego's tilma is still on display nearly 500 years later in the Basilica of Our Lady of Guadalupe, which receives millions of pilgrims each year.