Juan Diego Cuauhtlatoatzin
1474 — 1548
An indigenous Nahua convert baptized around 1524, Juan Diego experienced four apparitions of Our Lady of Guadalupe on Tepeyac Hill in December 1531. Sent by the Virgin to Bishop Zumárraga as her messenger, he carried Castilian roses in his tilma in the December frost. When he opened his cloak before the bishop, the image of the Virgin was found imprinted on the cloth — the same tilma that has hung in the Basilica of Our Lady of Guadalupe for nearly five centuries.