By Carol Glatz
Catholic News Service
ROME — Celebrating the feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe, Pope Francis said she reminds Catholics of her true essence as a woman, a mother and a “mestiza” or person of mixed race.
She revealed herself to St. Juan Diego as a “mestiza” to show “that she is everyone’s mother,” and she speaks to everyone as she spoke to this indigenous saint five centuries ago, with tenderness and motherly love, the pope said in his homily during a Mass in St. Peter’s Basilica Dec. 12.
Seminarians and priests from Rome’s Pontifical Latin American College alternated singing their traditional guitar-accompanied songs with the Sistine Chapel choir singing parts of the Mass in Gregorian chant.
The pope and concelebrating cardinals and bishops processed into the basilica dressed in white. Among the concelebrants were U.S. bishops from Illinois, Indiana and Wisconsin who were in Rome as part of their Dec. 9-13 “ad limina” visits to report on the status of their dioceses.
Pope Francis stood before a replica of St. Juan Diego’s tilma, which bears the image of Mary, who appeared to the saint in 1531.
In his homily, which the pope delivered off-the-cuff in Spanish, he reflected on the way Mary appears in the Gospels and in the apparitions to St. Juan Diego.