Before the Mother of God began making appearances in grottos and pastures around Europe, she turned up on a hill-top near Mexico City. It was December 1531, the Spanish conquest of the Aztec empire had begun 12 years before, and Catholicism was being peddled to the indigenous population. The apparition of the Virgin to a recently converted local man named Juan Diego led to the subsequent evangelization of millions, the construction of a basilica on the hill-top, and the designating of December 12th as the feast day of the Virgin, Nuestra Señora de Guadalupe. The pilgrimage to the site of the vision - now home to two basilicas since the original one began to sink into the ground it was constructed on - is often made on foot, by bicycle, or even in part on one’s
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