PROVIDENCE — This may be the final year for the visitation of the missionary image of Our Lady of Guadalupe in the Diocese of Providence.
After 20 years of traveling the world and coming to Rhode Island parishes for prayer and veneration, the future of the ministry is uncertain, said Jean Ernster, coordinator of the diocesan Office of Life and Family Ministry, which hosts the image.
Blessed in the presence of the original tilma of St. Juan Diego in Mexico City, the image is one of four missionary images of Our Lady of Guadalupe formerly owned by Dan Lynch Ministries of Vermont. The recent retirement of the ministry’s founder Dan Lynch has seen three of the images distributed among different parishes for permanent residence. Ernster said that the ministry’s present manager is currently continuing the traveling visitations with only one image, but whether this will continue is uncertain at present.
“I’m not quite sure what the future of it is going forward,” Ernster said.
The traveling image is a precise digital replica of the original image that appears on the 16th-century garment of St. Juan Diego. In 1531, the saint experienced apparitions of the Blessed Virgin Mary, who tasked him with asking the local bishop to build a church on Tepeyac Hill, near present-day Mexico City.
As a miraculous sign to convince the bishop of the visions’ authenticity, Mary directed St. Juan Diego to gather Castilian roses, which were not native to that region. The saint gathered the roses in his outer cloak, or tilma. When he presented them to the bishop, the roses fell out of the tilma to reveal an image of Mary imprinted upon the fabric.
The event was responsible for converting about nine million people to the Catholic faith, Ernster said, largely due to the symbolic significance of the images in the figure. One of the most striking associations is the presence of a four-petaled flower directly over Mary’s womb, which indicated life and divinity to the indigenous people of Mexico.
“Everything about it is communicating symbolically to the indigenous people what the (Spanish Catholic) missionaries were unable to fully communicate,” Ernster said. “Our Lady was able to bridge the gap of understanding. Not until her image was received by the indigenous people did they understand what the missionaries were trying to convey.”
The tilma and its image have been the subject of scientific study since at least 1981, when entomologist Philip Serna Callahan examined it under infrared light and concluded that there was an “original image” consisting of “the rose robe, blue mantle, hands and face” and that other details, namely the black tassel, moon, and cherub, were added by a later artist.
Still later, “the gold and black line decorations, angel, Aztec fold of the robe, sunburst, stars and background were painted, probably during the seventeenth century,” Callahan’s report stated.
Still, Callahan concluded that “there is no way to explain either the kind of color luminosity and brightness of pigments over the centuries.”
“The original figure,” he maintained, “is inexplicable.”
Since Callahan’s study, other researchers from a range of backgrounds and expertise have conducted their own assessments of the image and fabric, and conclusions sometimes contradict one another. Yet whatever science may find, there is no doubt that people have reported experiencing miraculous events after asking for Mary’s intercession before the traveling image.
Lisa Cooley, former coordinator of the Office of Life and Family Ministry, said that during her tenure supervising the image’s diocesan visitation people reported cases of cancer going into remission without medical explanation after they prayed for family or friends in the image’s presence.
Cooley added that during the COVID-19 lockdowns, a nurse visiting the image’s location at St. Mary’s on Broadway in Providence detected a heartbeat when she applied a stethoscope to the area of the Virgin’s womb.
The traveling image’s diocesan guardian of 20 years, Ray Piccirilli, said that “People follow this image around the different parishes and they come back to thank her for the miracles she’s performed. People who are dying come to the image and all of a sudden there are miraculous healings.”
It’s not always medical miracles. Piccirilli also said that a man found employment after his mother prayed for that intention before the traveling image, and Ernster said that a woman was able to conceive after her mother visited the image.
Sensory phenomena will sometimes accompany the image as well, Piccirilli said, including the aroma of roses and rose petals appearing on or around the image without an obvious source. After praying with the image outside of an abortion clinic in 2006, Piccirilli said, red rose petals surrounded the image as it was carried to St. Paul’s Church in Cranston for the Mass for Life.
“When we put it down (in the church), we look at the top of the image and we could see these red rose petals on top of the image,” Piccirilli said. He gathered them and took them to a local nursing home ministry. The petals remained intact and aromatic for the following 15 years, Piccirilli said.
Diana Santo, who hosts the image at her home during its diocesan visitation when it is not in a parish or school setting, agreed that the aroma of roses often accompanies the image.
Santo said that while the image is in her home, she invites people who “need help with sickness or with conversion. They’re in despair, depression. We’ve had great miracles happen at the house for those people.”
Santo related that the first time she hosted the image, her next-door neighbor’s sister experienced a medically inexplicable remission from a cancer diagnosis.
The neighbor brought her sister to Santo’s home to venerate the image. As those present joined in prayer, “the smell of roses got so strong, it was on my tongue, it was in my nose,” said Santo.
“Next thing I know I’m going over there checking on her and she’s saying she doesn’t need hospice anymore,” said Santo. “She started getting better and better and next thing you know she’s moving out of her sister’s house.”
Though the cancer returned one year later, Santo still considers the remission a miracle.
“I believe in my heart that God gave her this time to feel his love, go back to church, connect with her son, have some joy in her life,” Santo said. “I believe God was using her as a victim soul.”
The Catechism of the Catholic Church teaches that miracles strengthen faith in Jesus: “The One who does his Father’s words; they bear witness the is the Son of God. Miracles are not intended to satisfy people’s curiosity or desire for magic” (CCC 548). Indeed, God can work in a variety of ways, but any miracle, as a gratuitous grace from God, is meant above all to inspire and deepen faith, avoiding all superstition.
The image is transported between locations with great care, being folded at a center hinge, wrapped in a sewn blanket, placed in a case, and accompanied by much prayer by those handling it.
“Whoever’s got her in the car, we’re talking to her the whole way,” said Ernster. “We definitely feel like we’re in the presence of our Blessed Mother.”
“If you get a chance, come and see her,” said Piccirilli. “Come spend some time with your mother.”
The missionary image will be traveling around the diocese’s parishes through February 1. For a full and up-to-date visitation schedule, visit https://dioceseofprovidence.org/olgschedule.
