Guadalupe apparition was like a ‘new visitation,’ says Pope
December 15, 2014
On December 12, the Feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe, Pope Francis celebrated a Spanish-language Mass in St. Peter’s Basilica and compared the 16th-century Marian apparition to her visitation to St. Elizabeth.
The musical setting for the Mass was the Misa Criolla, a 1964 Argentine composition.
The Blessed Virgin “assumed within herself the cultural and religious symbolism of the native people, announcing her Son and giving Him to the new and suffering people of mixed race,” the Pope preached. “Many leapt for joy and hope before her visitation and before the gift of her Son, and the most perfect disciple of the Lord became the great missionary who brings the Gospel to our America.”
“Through her intercession, the Christian faithful began to become the richest treasure of the soul of the American people, whose precious pearl is Jesus Christ,” he added. “It is a patrimony which is transmitted and manifest today in the many baptism of multitudes of people, in the faith, hope and charity of many; in precious popular piety; and in that popular ethos that reveals itself in an awareness of human dignity, in the passion for justice, in solidarity with the poorest and suffering, in hope that is sometimes against every hope.”
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Further information:
- Santa Messa nella festa di Nostra Signora di Guadalupe (Holy See Press Office)
- Pope Francis: Mass of Our Lady of Guadalupe (Vatican Radio)
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