Empress of the Americas

Our Mother of Guadalupe
Location	Tepeyac Hill, Mexico City
Date	12 December 1531
Witness	Saint Juan Diego
Type	Marian apparition
Holy See approval	12 October 1895, during the Canonical coronation granted by Pope Leo XIII
Shrine	Basilica of Our Lady of Guadalupe, Tepeyac Hill, Mexico City, Mexico
Patronage	Mexico (2002) The Americas (12 October 1945)
Attributes	A contemplating woman clothed in a pink tunic robe covered by a cerulean mantle emblazoned with eight-point stars; while she stands atop a darkened crescent moon, carried by a cherubic angel.

Our Lady of Guadalupe (Spanish: Nuestra Señora de Guadalupe), also known as the Virgin of Guadalupe (Spanish: Virgen de Guadalupe), is a Catholic title of the Blessed Virgin Mary associated with a venerated image enshrined within the Minor Basilica of Our Lady of Guadalupe in Mexico City. The basilica is the most visited Catholic pilgrimage site in the world, and the world's third most-visited sacred site.Pope Leo XIII granted the venerated image a Canonical Coronation on 12 October 1895.

Official Catholic accounts state that the Virgin Mary appeared four times before Juan Diego and one more before Juan Diego's uncle. According to these accounts the first apparition occurred on the morning of December 9, 1531, when a native Mexican peasant named Juan Diego saw a vision of a maiden at a place called the Hill of Tepeyac, which would become part of Villa de Guadalupe, a suburb of Mexico City. Speaking to Juan Diego in his native Nahuatl language (the language of the Aztec empire), the maiden identified herself as the Virgin Mary, "mother of the very true deity" and asked for a church to be built at that site in her honor.

Based on her words, Juan Diego then sought out the archbishop of Mexico City, Fray Juan de Zumárraga, to tell him what had happened. As the bishop did not believe Diego, on the same day, Juan Diego saw the Virgin Mary for a second time (the second apparition); she asked him to keep insisting.

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