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In 1531 a "Lady from Heaven" appeared to Saint Juan Diego, a poor Indian from Tepeyac, a hill northwest of Mexico City. She identified herself as the Mother of the True God and instructed him to have the bishop build a church on the site. As a sign for the bishop, she left an image of herself imprinted miraculously on his tilma, a poor quality cactus-cloth. The tilma should have deteriorated within 20 years but shows no sign of decay after over 470 years. To this day it defies all scientific explanations of its origin.
Cardinal Robert Sarah, prefect emeritus of the Dicastery for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments, gave a keynote address June 26 at La Salle University in Mexico City on being “witnesses to the truth in a world in crisis.”
Monsignor Salvador Martínez, rector of the Guadalupe Basilica in Mexico City, noted that after two years of pandemic restrictions the Marian shrine “has resumed the impetus it had before and sometimes with greater strength.”
A church in Mexico City was the scene on Sunday of the death of Juan, a man in his sixties who got down on his knees to pray at the entrance of the church, made his way up the main aisle still on his knees, passed out, and died within minutes in front of the altar.