Juan de Zumárraga
The Franciscan bishop of Mexico to whom, in the Nican Mopohua, Juan Diego brings the Virgin’s request for a shrine at Tepeyac. The historian García Icazbalceta found no mention of the event in his surviving writings.
The Nican Mopohua names Don Fray Juan de Zumárraga, a Franciscan, as the bishop, lately arrived, to whom Juan Diego went. In that account he listens, asks for a sign, and has Juan Diego followed (Nican Mopohua lines 40–83); when the cloak is opened he kneels before the image and keeps it in his chapel (Nican Mopohua lines 181–193). See Our Lady of Guadalupe.
Joaquín García Icazbalceta wrote in 1883 that the writings of Zumárraga known to him, among them books of doctrine, letters, opinions, a pastoral exhortation and two wills, contain no allusion to the apparition or to the chapels and never use the name Guadalupe, and that the bishop went to Spain in the year after 1531 (García Icazbalceta, Letter on Guadalupe § 12).
In the timeline
- 1531, traditional dateOur Lady of Guadalupe
A Nahuatl account printed in 1649 tells how the Virgin Mary appeared in December 1531 to Juan Diego on the hill of Tepeyac and left her image on his cloak. The Catholic Church has approved the devotion and in 2002 declared Juan Diego a saint.