"Pope Francis said his "most intimate wish" was to pause in silence before the
image of Our Lady of Guadalupe. He said, "it has been studied and studied and
there aren't human explanations, this is a thing of God." Laying a bouquet of
yellow roses in front of the image, the pope sat down in prayerful silence for
20 minutes. Built in 1976, the Basilica of Our Lady of Guadalupe is located near the site of Mary's apparitions to St. Juan Diego in 1531. With some 12 million people visiting each year, it is Catholicism's most popular Marian shrine. The pope said, "Christians are called to be Mary's ambassadors and console those who are overwhelmed by trials and sufferings."
Juan Diego was told by an apparition of Mary to go to the top of a hill and he found roses growing, even though it was winter. He collected them in his tulpa, a traditional cloth garment, and when he arrived at the bishop's residence, he opened the cloak revealing that the roses had left an imprint on the garment. It's that 500-year-old cloth that Pope Francis venerated on Sunday.
It is a mystery of how the image of the Virgin of Guadalupe came to be imprinted on the cloth. The name "Guadalupe" comes from the indigenous word "Coatlaxoepuh," which means "the one who defeated the serpent," as the image in the cloth portrays.
When Pope Francis met with the bishops of Mexico, he highlighted the intercessory power of Our Lady of Guadalupe. He said, "I know that by looking into the eyes of the Blessed Virgin, I am able to follow the gaze of her sons and daughters who, in her, have learned to express themselves." He underscored the profound impact of Our Lady of Guadalupe, saying "no other voice can speak so powerfully to me of the Mexican heart... she guards its highest aspirations and the most hidden hopes."
[Mike Gendron] The depths of the supernatural blindness that keeps the pope in spiritual darkness is beyond comprehension. Tragically, religious indoctrination is one of the most powerful tools the devil uses to blind people from the light of the Gospel and the glory of Christ (2 Cor. 4:4). We know that Satan will use lying signs and wonders to deceive the world (Mat. 24:24). For the pope to attribute apparitions of Mary and miraculous paintings on cloth to "a thing of God' is pure blasphemy! Furthermore, Christians are never called to be ambassadors for Mary, but the pope rarely speaks from the authority of Scripture.
Born again Christians are ambassadors for Christ (2
Cor. 5:20). Many Catholics still believe Mary is
"the one who defeated the serpent." This is because the first
Catholic Bible, that was translated into English,
used the feminine pronoun "she" as the one who would bruise the serpent's head (Genesis
3:15). Pro-Gospel.org 