A few weeks ago, the Philosopher made another one of his unpredictable appearances on our website suggesting a proper prayer for those who doubt the existence of certain canonized saints. In this case it was the co-founder of the Trinitarian Order, Saint Felix of Valois. But, one can easily substitute any saint’s name in this oration, so long as the saint-who-never-was has an ample amount of non-believing devotees who have managed to get their non-credimuses published in respectable Catholic journals. Of course one wouldn’t write a book to disprove the existence of a saint — it wouldn’t sell — but one can certainly write articles about the invented one, articles that will get some favorable reviews here and there by equally professional co-critics.
What was my surprise last week when I read that there were certain scholars who doubted the existence of Saint Juan Diego. I guess I just haven’t been keeping up with all the latest research. Actually this news really isn’t the “latest,” it’s just a rehash of what those concerned scholars put forth as arguments against the canonization of Juan Diego after Pope John Paul II beatified him on May 6, in 1990, in the basilica of Our Lady of Guadalupe during his visit to Mexico that year.
Those of whom I speak weren’t denying the miracle that is the Miraculous Image itself. They were not denying that there was an apparition of Our Lady either on December 9, 1531. They were not even explicitly denying that Mary appeared to an Aztec Indian. At least not with their full rigor. What they were denying — and this is so very symptomatic of the myopic condition of documentolatrists — is that there is anything that can be historically known about this Indian. There’s no mention of him, they say, in any documents prior to a 1648 account. So, they argue: how can, or rather, why would the pope want to declare someone a saint who is not mentioned in any contemporary records? Not even Archbishop Zumarraga’s relatios mention him. For that matter, there is no record written by the hand of Zumarraga about the apparition either. Does that mean he didn’t believe in it? Why, then, did he order a church to be built on Tepeyac Hill immediately after he witnessed the two miracles of the Image on the tilma and the Castilian roses?
[Note: Before the apparition, the Archbishop of Mexico had been so troubled about a brewing civil war, with all his efforts at mediation proving fruitless, that he had placed Mexico City under interdict. That’s on record. He continued to pray ceaselessly for peace between the Spaniards and the Indians and one of the requests that he had made to Mary was that she would send him Castilian roses as a sign that she would soon bring peace.]
One of the anti-canonization protagonists was Stafford Poole, C.M., a full-time research historian in Los Angeles. He is the author of Our Lady of Guadalupe: The Origins and Sources of a Mexican National Symbol. He also wrote a disapproving article for Commonweal in its June 14, 2002, edition, one month before the July canonization. That article was titled: “Did Juan Diego Exist? Revisiting the Saint Christopher Syndrome.” [When Jesuit skeptics were questioning the existence of Saint Christopher long before Vatican II, Father Feeney used to refute them with eleven words: “Go start your own legend and see how far you get.”]
So, why did it take 117 years after the apparition for someone to put the story in writing? I do not know. Nor do I know, for sure, if there might not have been an account written by Bishop Zumarraga, which had gotten lost. With conversions coming in by the millions (by 1541, ten million Indian converts had been baptized — that’s on record), perhaps the bishop and his priests were “busy.” The bishop would have had to confirm all these converts as well. And he would have had to defend their rights, and keep the peace.
That first account, Image of the Virgin Mary, Mother of God of Guadalupe, Miraculous Apparition in the City of Mexico, was written in Spanish by Father Miguel Sanchez. The next year a book in the Nathuatl language appeared. It was called El Nican Mopohua. It was the story of the apparition based on Sanchez’ work but rewritten for the benefit of the native Aztec population. Juan Diego figures gloriously in both accounts.
He would surely protest saying that he figures “gloriously.” When he spoke to Our Lady of his own unworthiness, he referred to himself as, “a nobody, I am a small rope, a tiny ladder, the tail end, a leaf.” In his canonization address on July 31, 2002, Pope John Paul II quoted these very words of our saint from one of the most beautiful dialogues ever to take place between heaven and earth.
How do we know that Our Lady had a beautiful dialogue with Juan Diego? Well, he is now a canonized saint. That means, if you have divine and Catholic Faith, that you believe that he did in fact exist and that he practiced heroic virtue. Canonizations are infallible acts of popes speaking from the chair, ex cathedra. When a blessed is declared a saint, the pope uses the word definimus “we define.”
That means that if you are Catholic you believe Juan Diego told the truth when he related these words below with which Our Lady introduced herself to him almost five centuries ago:
“Listen and let it penetrate your heart, my dear little son. Do not be troubled or weighed down with grief. Let nothing alter your heart or your countenance. Do not fear any illness or vexation, anxiety or pain. Am I not here who am your Mother? Are you not under my shadow and protection? Am I not your fountain of life? Are you not in the folds of my mantle? In the crossing of my arms? Is there anything else you need?”
You, Saint Juan Diego, who once considered yourself a “nobody,” are most blessed among the saints of the Americas. You, Saint Juan Diego, are a “somebody,” whose existence continues to be verified by a whole nation, no matter what dead documents do not say about you. You are a living tradition. You are a legend. And, when one looks at a magnified blow-up of Our Lady’s eye, one can see reflected in the pupil at least one man. Could this be you, Saint Juan Diego, whom Our Lady is holding in the pupil of her eye?
Postscript. One photographic expert, Dr. Aste Tonsmann, from Cornell University, has testified that there is no scientific explanation how these reflected images could have been painted in the eye. But the curvature of the reflected images, optically speaking, could not be more scientific. His most recent findings, which are published in The Secret of Her Eyes, can be found at the end of this astounding article.
