Yesterday was the Feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe, the patron saint of the Americas. According to tradition, Our Lady appeared to a recent Mexican convert to Catholicism in the 16th century as he was hurrying to Mass to celebrate the Feast of the Immaculate Conception.
Our Lady appeared to this young man, speaking in the Aztec language, and asked him to have a sacred house built on the site where she had appeared. She told the man, named Juan Diego, to ask the bishop to see that her request was carried out. The bishop was not surprisingly sceptical of the peasant’s account.
The Catholic News Agency takes up the story:
But Juan Diego said he would produce unquestionable proof of the apparition– just as soon as he was finished tending to his dying uncle, whose death seemed immanent.
Once again making his way to church on Dec. 12, this time to summon a priest to his uncle’s deathbed, Juan Diego again encountered the radiant woman. She promised to cure his uncle, and to give him a sign to display for the bishop. On the hill where they had first met, she said he would find roses and other flowers, although it was the middle of winter.
Doing as she asked, he found the flowers and brought them back to her. The Virgin Mary then placed the flowers inside his tilma, the traditional winter garment he had been wearing, for their storage. She instructed him not to unwrap the tilma containing the flowers, until he had reached the bishop.
When he did, Bishop Zumárraga had his own encounter with Our Lady of Guadalupe, through the image of her that he found miraculously imprinted on the flower-filled tilma. The Mexico City basilica that now houses that tilma has become, by some estimates, the most-visited Catholic shrine in the world.
So what is this “gaffe” that I refer to in the headline of this post? Well, in 2009, not long after taking over as the United States Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton was on a visit to Mexico. She visited the shrine and was very impressed with the tilma. So what did she ask the local monsignor?
“Who painted it?”
“God” was the response.
More than one Catholic website ran a caption competition for a photo of Mrs Clinton’s visit to the shrine. I recall one possibly uncharitable but undoubtedly humorous suggestion as a response to the question of who painted the tilma.
“Oh, no one you know,” someone offered.
Ouch.
That might a little bit harsh, but Mrs Clinton’s advisers surely had a few of their own questions to answer for not briefing their boss on the story behind the tilma.
