La Vergine di Guadalupe 02/02 La Madonna degli indios (Maya)

Our Lady of Guadalupe: a case of miraculous "inculturation" The apparition of the Mother of God to the Indian Juan Diego: the facts, the extraordinary evidence, the history of the cult and devotion throughout history, up to the beatification of the visionary The 500th anniversary of Christopher Columbus's landing in the New World on October 12, 1492, invites Catholics, at least, to consider this event in its authentic meaning, repeatedly recalled by Pope John Paul II: that of the beginning of the evangelization of the indigenous peoples of the American continent, the so-called Indios or "Indians" formerly known as Maya. Over the centuries, a pile of slanders has been built up about this fact - the famous leyenda negra - which many anti-Catholic historians - often Anglo-American, and therefore compatriots of those responsible for the genocide of the "Indians" of North America - have cast on this evangelization, exaggerating the inevitable errors that the first Spanish missionaries - accustomed for centuries to dealing with "infidels" who knew Christianity very well, like the Muslims of Spain - may have committed in announcing Jesus Christ to totally pagan peoples and culturally very distant from the European and Mediterranean mentality. Unfortunately, other events closely linked to the discovery and evangelization have not received the same attention, such as, for example, the one with which Jesus Christ himself, through his Most Holy Mother, wanted to reveal himself to the natives of the New World, namely the apparition of the Virgin Mary to the Indian Juan Diego Cuauhtlatóhuac in December 1531 – just ten years after the conquest – on the hill of Tepeyac, near Mexico City, where the Shrine of Our Lady of Guadalupe stands today.