Juan Diego

Juan Diego Cuauhtlatoatzin or Juan Diego (July 12, 1474–May 30, 1548) was a 16th century indigenous Native American from Mexico who reportedly saw a Marian apparition in 1531 now known as Our Lady of Guadalupe. The apparition has had a significant impact on the spread of the Catholic faith within Mexico. The Catholic Church canonized him in 2002 as its first indigenous American saint.

The reality of Juan Diego's existence has been questioned by a number of experts on the early religious history of New Spain including Bernardino de Sahagun, Joaquin Garcia Icazbalceta, Stafford Poole, Louise Burkhart and David Brading, who argue that there is a complete lack of sources about Juan Diego's existence prior to the publication of the Nican Mopohua a century later, in 1649 (they do not accept the validity of the Codex Escalada as historical evidence). Notwithstanding these doubts, the findings of an interdisciplinary study, by nearly two dozen experts involving a prominent Mexican university and a noted American scholar of pre-Columbian Mesoamerican linguistics and anthropology, all indicated authenticity of the document and 16th century origin.