Please click here to read more about THE HIDDEN MESSAGES REVEALED IN OUR LADY OF GUADALUPE IMAGE.

Protection from damage

Roman Catholic sources claim many miraculous and supernatural properties for the image such as that the tilma has maintained its structural integrity over nearly 500 years against soot, candle wax, incense, constant manual veneration by devotees and the historical fact that the image was displayed without any protective glass for the first 115 years; while replicas normally last only about 15 years before suffering degradation; that it repaired itself with no external help after a 1791 nitric acid that spilled on the top right of the image causing considerable damage but left the aureola of the Virgin intact.

Furthermore, on 14 November 1921 a bomb hidden within a basket of flowers brought by anti-Catholic secularist damaged the altar, but left the tilma unharmed. A brass standing Crucifix, bent in the explosion, is now preserved at the shrine museum and is believed to be miraculous among devotees.

Claims of supernaturality

In 1929 and 1951 photographers claimed to have found a figure reflected in the Virgin's eyes; upon inspection they said that the reflection was tripled in what is called the Purkinje effect, commonly found in human eyes. An ophthalmologist, Dr. Jose Aste Tonsmann, later enlarged an image of the Virgin's eyes by 2500x and claimed to have found not only the aforementioned single figure, but images of all the witnesses present when the tilma was first revealed before Zumárraga in 1531, plus a small family group of mother, father, and a group of children, in the center of the Virgin's eyes, fourteen people in all.

Numerous Catholic websites repeat an unsourced claim that in 1936 biochemist Richard Kuhn analyzed a sample of the fabric and announced that the pigments used were from no known source, whether animal, mineral or vegetable. Dr. Philip Serna Callahan, who photographed the icon under infrared light, declared from his photographs that portions of the face, hands, robe, and mantle had been painted in one step, with no sketches or corrections and no visible brush strokes.

Devotions and veneration

The Virgin of Guadalupe is considered the Patroness of Mexico and the Continental Americas; she is also venerated by Native Americans, on the account of the devotion calling for the conversion of the Americas. Replicas of the tilma can be found in thousands of churches throughout the world, and numerous parishes bear her name.

Due to a claim that her black girdle indicates pregnancy on the image, the Blessed Virgin Mary, under this title is popularly invoked as Patroness of the Unborn and a common image for the Pro-Life movement.

NEXT