Editing Our Lady of Guadalupe (section)

==The beatification of Juan Diego==
[[File:Eternal father painting guadalupe.jpg|right|160px|thumb|An 18th-century [[hagiographic]] painting of [[God the Father]] fashioning the image]]
Under Pope John Paul II the move to [[beatification|beatify]] Juan Diego intensified. John Paul II took a special interest in non-European Catholics and saints. During his leadership, the [[Congregation for the Causes of Saints]] declared Juan Diego "venerable" (in 1987), and the pope himself announced his beatification on May 6, 1990, during a Mass at the [[Basilica of Our Lady of Guadalupe]] in Mexico City, declaring him "protector and advocate of the indigenous peoples", with December 9 established as his feast day.<ref name="Saragoza">{{cite book |last1=Saragoza |first1=Alex |title=Mexico Today: An Encyclopedia of Life in the Republic |date=2012 |publisher=ABC-CLIO |isbn=978-0-313-34948-5 |page=95 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=v49ppkhgtjMC&q=Antonio+of+Tlaxcala+beatified&pg=PA95 |language=en}}</ref>

At that time historians revived doubts as to the quality of the evidence regarding Juan Diego. The writings of bishop [[Juan de Zumárraga|Zumárraga]], into whose hands Juan purportedly delivered the miraculous image, did not refer to him or the event. The record of the 1556 ecclesiastical inquiry omitted him, and he was not mentioned in documentation before the mid-17th century. In 1996 the 83-year-old abbot of the [[Basilica of Guadalupe]], [[Guillermo Schulenburg]], was forced to resign following an interview published in the [[Catholic Church|Catholic]] magazine ''Ixthus,'' in which he was quoted as saying that Juan Diego was "a symbol, not a reality", and that his canonization would be the "recognition of a cult. It is not recognition of the physical, real existence of a person."<ref>[http://www.dailycatholic.org/issue/archives/1999Dec/232dec7,vol.10,no.232txt/dec7nv4.htm ''Daily Catholic''] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20071016064856/http://dailycatholic.org/issue/archives/1999Dec/232dec7,vol.10,no.232txt/dec7nv4.htm |date=October 16, 2007 }}, December 7, 1999, accessed November 30, 2006</ref> In 1883 [[Joaquín García Icazbalceta]], historian and biographer of Zumárraga, in a confidential report on the Lady of Guadalupe for [[Bishop]] Labastida, had been hesitant to support the story of the vision. He concluded that Juan Diego had not existed.<ref>''Juan Diego y las Apariciones el pimo Tepeyac'' (Paperback) by Joaquín García Icazbalceta {{ISBN|970-92771-3-8}}</ref>

In 1995, Father Xavier Escalada, a Jesuit whose four volume Guadalupe encyclopedia had just been published, announced the existence of a sheet of parchment (known as ''[[Codex Escalada]]''), which bore an illustrated account of the vision and some notations in Nahuatl concerning the life and death of Juan Diego. Previously unknown, the document was dated 1548. It bore the signatures of Antonio Valeriano and Bernardino de Sahagún, which are considered to verify its contents. The codex was the subject of an appendix to the Guadalupe encyclopedia, published in 1997.<ref name = "Deerskin"/>{{Pages needed|date=February 2024}}{{sfn|Poole|2006|pp=131-133}} Some scholars remained unconvinced, one describing the discovery of the Codex as "rather like finding a picture of St. Paul's vision of Christ on the [[road to Damascus]], drawn by St. Luke and signed by St. Peter."{{sfn|Brading|2001|p=58}}