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Mexico City, Mexico, Dec 12, 2019 / 04:00 am (CNA).- In the 500 years since Our Lady of Guadalupe appeared, the image of Our Lady has become the subject of several popular myths and legends, especially in Mexico, where she appeared. 

Fr. Eduardo Chávez was the postulator for Juan Diego’s canonization and is a renowned expert on the apparitions. He is also director of the Institute for Guadalupan Studies.

Speaking to ACI Prensa, CNA’s Spanish language news partner, Chávez separated fact from fiction.

Is it true the image of Our Lady of Guadalupe has the same temperature as a human body?

“It’s logical that marble, stone, wood, and fabric have different temperatures,” he said. The image of the Virgin is formed on “a cloth made out of plant fibers, an agave called ‘ixotl.’ And it doesn’t have a temperature like a human being would have,” he said, dispelling a common rumor about the image.

Was the image painted or fabricated by human hands?

Chávez said the idea that the image was painted by human hands is “simply and plainly impossible,” because among other important details, St. Juan Diego’s tilma “doesn’t even have any brushstrokes on it.”

“It’s imprinted on there, it’s a print as such,” he noted.

Chávez also pointed to the miraculous nature of the image, asking “how is it possible for it to have lasted despite the fact that acid was accidentally spilled on it in 1784? How is it possible that after a bomb was set off underneath it on November 14, 1921, that nothing happened to it?”

Do the Virgin’s eyes move?

The priest said that on social media “people are saying that if you shine a strong light, the eyes dilate and things like that. No such thing. They don’t move, they don’t dilate.”

Chávez explained that “they’re misinterpreting something that an ophthalmologist, Enrique Graue, noted, namely that the eyes seem to be human, in the sense that they look like a photo of a human being, with the depth and reflection of a human eye.”

Does the Virgin of Guadalupe “float” on the mantilla?

Chávez was blunt: “The image doesn’t float,” rather “it’s imprinted on the tilma.”

“Nor are there two or three images placed one on top of the other,” as some claim, he explained.

Is Our Lady of Guadalupe a Catholic adaptation of an Aztec goddess?

Some scholars have promoted the idea that the Virgin of Guadalupe is a Catholic adaptation of the Aztec goddess, Coatlicue Tonantzin, who is a combination of a woman and serpents, and a symbol of fertility.

However, Chávez said that Our Lady of Guadalupe is not an adaptation of a goddess, and has nothing to do with idolatry.

“She’s not called Coatlicue, which would be idolatry, she’s called Tonantzin which isn’t any kind of idolatry, but means ‘our venerable mother,’ and as the indigenous affectionately say, ‘our dearest mother.’ It’s a title, it’s not idolatry.”

“The missionaries of the 16th century would never have made up a costume for a pagan goddess. That’s completely false,” he underscored.

Is there music hidden in the image of the Virgin of Guadalupe?

Based on mathematical analysis, Mexican accountant Fernando Ojeda discovered music embedded in the image of Our Lady of Guadalupe, Chávez explained.

Viewing the flowers and stars in the image of the Virgin as if they were musical notes, Ojeda outlined found a melody.

Chávez said that analysts repeated the experiment with copies of paintings from the 16th and 17th centuries, “where stars and flowers are placed at the painter’s discretion”, but the only thing they produced was “noise, not harmony.”

“Only with the original does a perfect harmony emerge, with a symphonic arrangement. It is true, music comes forth from the image of the Virgin of Guadalupe,” he affirmed.

Was there recently a light miraculously projected on the womb of the Virgin of Guadalupe?

For Chávez, “it’s hard to know if it was a miracle at that time because we don’t know if it was a ray of light that happened to hit upon one of the nearby metal objects, projecting a light on her womb.” 

“What we do know is that she is the defender of life,” he said, and pointed to “the simple fact that she has a dark ribbon over the womb, which means she’s pregnant and that therefore Jesus Christ Our Lord is in her immaculate womb.”

Can words be seen on the image of the Virgin of Guadalupe?

Responding to those who say they can see the word “peace,” on the image, Chávez said “I don’t see that anywhere.”

“She communicates with glyphs as the indigenous did. And when it was by words she spoke in Náhuatl through Juan Diego who later translated,” he said. 

Did Bishop Juan de Zumárraga mistreat Saint Juan Diego?

“The key, everything turns on the bishop,” he said, since “although the Virgin of Guadalupe chose a layman, spoke to a layman, expressed her message to a layman,” the shrine she asked for “was not going to be done without the authority of the bishop.”

Chávez said it was instead the servants who treated Saint Juan Diego badly when he went to see Bishop  Juan de Zumárraga, “it was the servants who left him outside.”

The Franciscan bishops “never treated him badly, on the contrary, he treated him with affection” as well as with “a lot of respect, and much dignity,” Chávez said.

This story was originally published by ACI Prensa, CNA’s Spanish language news partner. It has been translated and adapted by CNA.

[…]

Mexico City, Mexico, Jun 29, 2018 / 05:17 pm (ACI Prensa).- Various civil organizations in Mexico, including one dedicated to the philosophy of St. Thomas More, have urged politicians participating in the upcoming general election to re-establish peace and justice in the country.

By signing of the “Pact for Peace,” the organizations stressed that “We educational, social, political and governmental actors must all be united  in order to strengthen the essential conditions for peace: the promotion of ethical, human and social values of respect and peaceful coexistence. The prevention of violence, drugs and crime. Social dialogue and conciliation.”

The signatories include National Parents Union, the Mexican Commission for Human Rights, the Citizen Coordinator, the Fundación Tomás Moro, and the Citizen Council for Public Safety and Criminal Justice.

Mexico’s July 1 general election will determine the country’s president as well as all of the members of the federal legislature. Many regional and local positions will also be voted on.

The Mexican civil organizations also expressed their rejection of campaign promises such as the creation of an “armed civilian guard.”

The signers encouraged “the Armed Forces to remain as long as necessary (performing) domestic security duties to protect citizens,” and at the same time they called for “the prohibition and dissolution of self-defense groups” and “the dismantling of armed organized crime gangs.”

They also asked the winners of the July 1 electoral contest to establish as public policy in the different levels of the government a substantial improvement in “care and assistance for crime victims and their families who are demanding justice and solidarity.”

“We social organizations that are fighting for peace demand from the political actors the commitment to create a social and political climate of peace and to resolve their conflicts without creating chaos, making threats, or encouraging acts of vengeance.”

The civil organizations also urged the authorities who are elected to work with “transparency” against corruption and that they provide “justice against impunity.”

“We ask the president of Mexico to report quarterly to the National Public Safety Council and to make the information public so society can evaluate the results in abating impunity, crime and vioence. And that the Council report on the performance of the public prosecutors, criminal judges and magistrates,” they said.

They then encouraged that there be order in the prisons and at the same time neither “hatred nor amnesty.”

“We urge that the prisons be put in order so they are not schools of criminality, that sentences be served with social work and that their assimilation back into society be effective with the participation of social organizations,” they stated.

The Pact for Peace concluded by urging candidates to accept the results of the July 1 elections and “in the case of disagreements,” that they turn to the board of elections and the other legally competent authorities.

More than 100 politicians have been killed across Mexico ahead of the general election.

On June 21, Ocampo mayoral candidate Fernando Ángeles Juárez was killed by unknown gunmen, the BBC reported. When federal forces arrived to investigate the killing, they were stopped by local police. The entire local police force of the city in Michoacan state has since been detained.

This article was originally published by our sister agency, ACI Prensa. It has been translated and adapted by CNA.

[…]

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