An impoverished Mexican shepherd, Juan Diego, will become the first Latin American indigenous saint today after an outdoor mass celebrated by Pope John Paul II on the outskirts of Mexico City.
Diego, born in 1474, abandoned his native name, Cuauhtlatoatzin, when he was baptised by a Franciscan missionary. In 1531, while walking on a hillside at Guadalupe near Mexico City, he reportedly had a vision of the Virgin Mary, who told him to build a church in her honour on the same spot.
Sceptics are quick to point out the unlikely coincidence of the Virgin's appearance on Tepeyac, the site of an Aztec temple dedicated to Tonatzin, (earth goddess and protectress of humanity), which had been razed to the ground on the orders of Spain's Bishop Zumarraga. The Virgin instructed him to pick roses from the desolate hill and deliver them to Zumarraga as a sign. Juan Diego gathered up the blossoms and hurried off to complete his mission. When he met the bishop, a perfect image of the Dark Virgin was revealed emblazoned on Juan Diego's cloak, an image which survives today and is known as Our Lady of Guadalupe.
Meanwhile, the pope canonised the first Central American saint on Monday, honouring Tenerife-born missionary Pedro de San José Betancourt, who worked among Guatemala's enslaved poor in the 17th century. "He was driven by a great missionary spirit," said the Pope.
Guatemalan President Alfonso Portillo greeted the pontiff by announcing that he had sent a Bill to congress to abolish the death penalty. During the Pope's first visit to Guatemala in 1983, former dictator Efraín Ríos Montt defied him by executing six people shortly before the Pope arrived. Mr Rios Montt, who ordered the destruction of 440 Indian villages, is head of parliament and a political ally of President Portillo.
The Guadalupe Virgin is the most powerful symbol of national unity in Mexico. During the Mexican revolution the followers of Emiliano Zapata cried "Viva Guadalupe" as they went into battle, cries echoed by migrant Mexican workers in California in the 1970s, when Cesar Chavez led the struggle for workers' rights.