Skip to content
The One True Church

St. Juan Diego

Feast 9 December

A widower walking to Mass who was asked to build a house for a lady. His tilma still hangs. Mexico still looks up.

Sacred art

Statues and images

No photograph of St. Juan Diego is shown. The honour goes to the person, and through the person to God. It is not a substitute for the life written below.

The whole treasury

Canonized in 2002. The Church was slow, then sure. The tilma is the argument that outlasted the arguments.

Pray with Juan Diego

The prayers

Signs that name Juan Diego

If it belongs to Juan Diego, it is here, with a door back into the story.

Our Lady of Guadalupe — Tepeyac, Mexico City. The tilma of Juan Diego: Mary as a mestiza woman, hands in prayer, standing on a crescent, stars on her mantle, the image that still hangs in Mexico City.
MarianChurch-approved

Our Lady of Guadalupe

Tepeyac, Mexico City1531

Mary appears to St. Juan Diego, asks for a church, and leaves her image on his cactus-fiber tilma — an image still visible, and still drawing millions, nearly five centuries later.

6 studied signs on this image

The tilma cloth — Tepeyac, Mexico City. The tilma of Juan Diego: Mary as a mestiza woman, hands in prayer, standing on a crescent, stars on her mantle, the image that still hangs in Mexico City.
MarianOpen / under study

The tilma cloth

Tepeyac, Mexico City1531; still hanging

Juan Diego’s tilma is a cloak of ayate — a coarse cactus-fiber cloth that in the Mexican sun and damp should last a few decades. It has lasted nearly five hundred years, through smoke, kisses, a bomb, and the breath of millions.

A studied sign

The eyes of Our Lady of Guadalupe — Tepeyac, Mexico City. The tilma of Juan Diego: Mary as a mestiza woman, hands in prayer, standing on a crescent, stars on her mantle, the image that still hangs in Mexico City.
MarianOpen / under study

The eyes of Our Lady of Guadalupe

Tepeyac, Mexico CityFirst noticed 1929; studied through the late 20th century

In the eyes of the woman on the tilma, photographers and ophthalmologists have reported reflections — as if a living cornea were catching a room. Some popular accounts go further and name thirteen figures in the enlargement. This study holds the modest claim and the strong claim apart.

A studied sign