American Minority Literature

Bolstering Faith of Indians, Pope Gives Mexico a Saint

By FRANK BRUNI and GINGER THOMPSON

New York Times, August 1, 2002

[Instructor's note: Bolded areas below indicate areas where traditional Indian and modern Catholic traditions meet in ways suggestive of Objective 5c: The Ambivalent Minority and similar mixings in Bless Me, Ultima.]

MEXICO CITY, July 31 — During a lavishly staged Mass that mingled flourishes from the ancient Aztecs with traditional hymns, Pope John Paul II made an emphatic appeal today to the indigenous people who have abandoned the Roman Catholic Church and presented them with a saint they could call their own.

As the pope canonized Juan Diego, an Indian convert to Catholicism in the 16th century, Indians in feathered headdresses blew conch shells and danced through the Basilica of Guadalupe here in celebration of what the pope called "the gift of the first indigenous saint of the American continent."

The pope described Juan Diego, an Aztec who is said to have received a vision of the Virgin of Guadalupe in 1531, as an important force behind the spread of Catholicism among this region's Indians, whose contributions the pope repeatedly praised.

"Christ's message, through his mother, took up the central elements of the indigenous culture, purified them and gave them the definitive sense of salvation," the pope said in Spanish, according to the official Vatican translation of his remarks.

The pope added that Juan Diego "facilitated the fruitful meeting of two worlds" in the wake of the conquest of Mexico by Catholic Spaniards and "became the catalyst for the new Mexican identity."

This was more than a routine canonization, even though it was the 464th by this pope. It represented a signal moment in the church's fight for its future in Latin America, where evangelical Protestants are increasingly making inroads, especially among indigenous people.

It stirred considerable debate in Mexico: about whether Juan Diego was a real man or a convenient marketing tool for the Catholic faith, and about whether the church, in trying to court indigenous people, was actually offending them.

It brought the 82-year-old pope, who arrived here on Tuesday night looking weaker and more exhausted than at any previous point during an 11-day trip, back to the country of the first foreign journey of his papacy 23 years ago.

He was then a vigorous man, strumming a guitar with mariachis, wearing a sombrero in a bullfighting ring and establishing an interest in Latin America and appetite for global travel that became trademarks of his papacy. Enormous crowds greeted him ecstatically.

He is now stooped with age and diminished by Parkinson's disease, often slurring his words and struggling to keep his head upright. But as he came full circle this morning, returning to the Basilica of Guadalupe, Mexico's most important Catholic shrine, the crowds still went wild — and that was only one element of his warm reception.

In a country that has long adhered to a strict separation of church and state, Vicente Fox became the first Mexican president to attend a papal Mass. Mr. Fox had already made headlines by bowing to the Pope and kissing his ring on Tuesday night.

In an interview on emerging from the basilica today, President Fox called the pope's visit to Mexico a "revolution of spirituality."

Outside the basilica, tens of thousands of Mexicans from across the country watched the ceremony on a large movie screen. Many were Indian men and women who wore hand-embroidered shawls and straw hats. They spoke little Spanish and stared at the screen with somber reverence.

But their serious mood turned celebratory when Pope John Paul declared Juan Diego a saint. They began chanting Juan Diego's name.

"It gives me satisfaction to know that Juan Diego is now equal to all the other saints in our church," said Gloria Estela González, a Purepecha Indian from central Mexico. "He shows that humble and simple people like us have a place at the altar."

The Mass was a spectacle of sights, sounds and smells, some of them familiar. As the pope, wearing a tall white-and-gold miter, sat in a thronelike chair on the altar, thick plumes of incense and strains of organ music rose toward the basilica's soaring, cone-shaped ceiling.

But dancers and drums evoking the Aztec past, and readings from the Bible in Nahuatl, the Aztec language that is still spoken today, all represented significant departures from traditional Catholic ceremony and liturgy.

The pope used his homily to implore Mexicans to "support the indigenous people in their legitimate aspirations," and later added, "Mexico needs its indigenous peoples and these peoples need Mexico."

He made no secret of his desire to see them within the Catholic fold, asking the spirit of Juan Diego "to accompany the church on her pilgrimage to Mexico, so that she may be more evangelizing and more missionary each day."

On Tuesday, in Guatemala, the pope had singled out indigenous people for praise during a canonization ceremony there for Central America's first saint.

On Thursday, here in Mexico, he is scheduled to beatify two Indian converts to Catholicism from Mexico's colonial past. Beatification is a step on the way to canonization.

But some Indian leaders here have rejected Juan Diego and the two men to be beatified as traitors, accusing them of having bowed to religious powers that scorned and suppressed native traditions and abetted the exploitation and killing of Indian people.

Indian leaders were outraged when the archdiocese of Mexico released its official image of Juan Diego, depicting the new saint with traits — straight hair, a full beard and an angular face — that did not seem to reflect an Indian ancestry.

"The image of Juan Diego confirms the racist mentality of the Catholic Church," said Francisco Jiménez Pablo, leader of an indigenous group in the southern state of Chiapas. "It is more an affirmation of the conquistadors than of native people. In short, it is an act of discrimination toward us."

Mexico has one of the largest Indian populations in Latin America — an estimated 12 million people, or more than 10 percent of Mexicans.

While the vast majority of those indigenous people still consider themselves Catholic, there are states, especially in poorer southern Mexico, where as many as 30 percent now call themselves Protestant. One reason for their conversions is their belief that Protestant religions are more sensitive to their cultures.

But the pope was clearly trying to challenge such perceptions today, and to rebut any criticism of Juan Diego as a figure who betrayed his indigenous roots, by presenting him as a model for the integration of different traditions.

"In accepting the Christian message without forgoing his indigenous identity, Juan Diego discovered the profound truth of the new humanity, in which all are called to be children of God," the pope said.

The basilica where the Mass was held contains what is said to be a shawl that belonged to Juan Diego. It bears the brown-skinned visage of the Virgin of Guadalupe, a powerful symbol of national identity for Mexicans.

As the story goes, that image appeared miraculously on Juan Diego's shawl after his vision of the Virgin. Hundreds of thousands of Mexicans visit the basilica every December to pray to her, and the pope declared her the patron saint of the Americas on his previous visit here, in 1999.

This visit is the final leg of a trip that began on Tuesday of last week and is scheduled to end when the pope arrives in Rome on Friday.