Virgin of Guadalupe. Our Lady of Guadalupe, also known as the Virgin of Guadalupe, is a Catholic title of the Blessed Virgin Mary associated with a Marian apparition and 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. Catholic accounts claim that the Virgin Mary appeared four times before Juan Diego and once more before Juan Diego's uncle. According to those Catholic version accounts, the first apparition occurred on the morning of December 9, 1531, when it is said that a native Mexican peasant named Juan Diego experienced a vision of a young woman at a place called the Hill of Tepeyac, which would become part of Villa de Guadalupe, in a suburb of Mexico City. According to the accounts, the woman, speaking to Juan Diego in his native Nahuatl language, identified herself as the Virgin Mary, mother of the very true deity. She was said to have 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. Not unexpectedly, the bishop did not believe Diego, but on the same day Juan Diego saw the young woman for a second time. The story continues saying she then asked him to keep insisting. On Sunday, December 10, Juan Diego talked to the archbishop for a second time. The latter instructed him to return to Tepeyac Hill, and to ask the lady for a truly acceptable, miraculous sign to prove her identity. That same day, the third apparition occurred when Diego returned to Tepeyac and encountering the same woman, he reported back to her the bishop's request for a sign; she consented to provide one on the following day. By Monday, December 11, however, Juan Diego's uncle, Juan Bernardino, had fallen sick so Juan Diego was obliged to attend to him. In the very early hours of Tuesday, December 12, Juan Bernardino's condition having deteriorated overnight, Juan Diego set out to Tlatelolco to fetch a Catholic priest to hear Juan Bernardino's confession and help minister to him on his death-bed. In order to avoid being delayed by the Virgin and ashamed at having failed to meet her on the Monday as agreed, Juan Diego chose another route around the hill, but the Virgin intercepted him and asked where he was going; Juan Diego explained what had happened and the Virgin gently chided him for not having had recourse to her. In the words which have become the most famous phrase of the Guadalupe event and are inscribed over the main entrance to the Basilica of Guadalupe, she asked, ¿No estoy yo aquí que soy tu madre?. She assured him that Juan Bernardino had now recovered and she told him to gather flowers from the top of Tepeyac Hill, which was normally barren, especially in the cold of December. Juan followed her instructions and he found Castilian roses, not native to Mexico, blooming there. The Virgin arranged the flowers in Juan's tilma, or cloak, and when Juan Diego opened his cloak before archbishop Zumárraga on December 12, the flowers fell to the floor, and on the fabric was the image of the Virgin of Guadalupe. The next day, on December 13, Juan Diego found his uncle fully recovered, as the Virgin had assured him, and Juan Bernardino recounted that he too had seen her, at his bed-side; that she had instructed him to inform the bishop of this apparition and of his miraculous cure; and he said that she had told him she desired to be known under the title of Guadalupe. The bishop kept Juan Diego's mantle first in his private chapel and then in the church on public display where it attracted great attention. On December 26, 1531 a procession formed for taking the miraculous image back to Tepeyac where it was installed in a small hastily erected chapel. In course of this procession, the first miracle was allegedly performed when an Indian was mortally wounded in the neck by an arrow shot by accident during some stylized martial displays executed in honour of the Virgin. In great distress, the Indians carried him before the Virgin's image and pleaded for his life. Upon the arrow being withdrawn, the victim made a full and immediate recovery. Juan Diego's tilma has become Mexico's most popular religious and cultural symbol, and has received widespread ecclesiastical and popular support. In the 19th century it became the rallying call of the Spaniards born in America, in what they labeled New Spain.