Our Lady of Guadalupe

Friday was the feast day of Our Lady of Guadalupe, patroness of the unborn and of the Americas.

Zenit reported that on Friday 6 million people visited Mexico City’s Basilica of Our Lady in Guadalupe, where the famous tilma with the image of her apparition to St. Juan Diego in 1531 is kept.

Speaking at yesterday’s Angelus prayers in St. Peter’s Square, Pope Benedict XVI took note of the feast in his remarks to pilgrims. He asked them to prepare for Christmas by “intensifying prayer, enlivening interior joy and dedicating themselves to a meditative listening of the word of God, so as to afterward transmit this with simplicity to those around you.”

Said the Pope, “I entrust this beautiful task to the maternal protection of the Virgin Mary, who is so present during these days in the heart of the beloved Latin American nations with her image of Guadalupe.”

The Daily Blog didn’t post an item on Friday to mark the feast, due to coverage we devoted instead to the death of Cardinal Avery Dulles and the release of the Vatican’s new document on bioethics, Dignitas Personae.

So we’re giving belated recognition today to this great feast by posting the above video of a pilgrimage to Mexico City’s Basilica of Our Lady in Guadalupe organized by the Knights of Columbus. The video recounts charitable activities the Knights are undertaking in the name of the Virgin of Guadalupe to provide wheelchairs to disabled people in Mexico City and other areas of the developing world.

— Tom McFeely