Official Catholic accounts state that on the morning of December 9, 1531, Juan Diego saw an apparition of a young girl at the Hill of Tepeyac, near Mexico City.
Speaking to him in Nahuatl, the girl asked that a church be built at that site in her honor; from her words, Juan Diego recognized the girl as the Virgin Mary. Diego told his story to the Spanish Archbishop of Mexico City, Fray Juan de Zumárraga, who instructed him to return to Tepeyac Hill, and ask the "lady" for a miraculous sign to prove her identity.
The first sign was the Virgin healing Juan's uncle.
The Virgin told Juan Diego to gather flowers from the top of Tepeyac Hill. Although December was very late in the growing season for flowers to bloom, Juan Diego found Castillian roses, not native to Mexico, on the normally barren hilltop.
The Virgin arranged these in his peasant cloak or tilma. When Juan Diego opened his cloak before Bishop Zumárraga on December 12, the flowers fell to the floor, and on the fabric was the image of the Virgin of Guadalupe.
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The miracle continues in that the "cloak" is still around, the exact same cloth. It's been verified by all the gainsayers in the world who want to prove ANY and ALL miracle(s) fraudulent.
I saw the cloak myself a couple of times when I lived in Mexico City for two years, when I was in my twenties. It's still a vibrant blue. That's all I can remember of it.
A cloak is proof?
Really?
And it's still vibrant blue?
Would that be like all the dead allegedly uncorrupted bodies of saints that are waxed and tweaked to look like they're still alive?
With the Catholic church's history of fraud in its claims about the incorruption of its relics, I can't for the life of me understand why someone would believe anything they tell anyone about *relics*.