Sir, In his article on Guadalupe (September 10th), Michael McCaughan makes a fundamental error: the shrine of the Virgin of Guadalupe consists, not of a statue of Our Lady, but of an image inexplicably impressed on the cloak (tilma) of Juan Diego. McCaughan includes a photograph which he alleges is the shrine of the Virgin; this photograph is of the original site of the apparition and merely commemorates the event.
Further, McCaughan implies that the "cult" grew only because of the efforts of the Church authorities. In fact, Francis Johnston, author of The Wonder at Guadalupe, demonstrates that these authorities were reluctant to endorse the image in case it could be confused with Aztec goddess worship, and because Luther's preaching against the veneration of images had influenced even the Catholic Church.
Johnston records that the Church simply hadn't the resources to cope with the sheer volume of conversions at this period - a handful of missionaries, some of whom, as noted, were in fact opposed to the cult, could hardly have been responsible for nine million conversions in a matter of years (a figure thrown into relief by the number of Catholics abandoning the faith in Reformation Europe - five million over the same period).
A more plausible explanation for the development of the cult among the Aztecs has to be the qualities intrinsic to the image itself: its durability, composition, and colouration; the minuteness of the detail, impressed on rough fabric; and the combination of the weave of the fabric and colouration to produce depth and shading, a feat impossible for an artist to reproduce. (To this day, scientific investigation has failed to explain the origin and nature of the image.) How else explain the enthusiasm of the Aztecs for an image which, in significant ways, openly refutes aspects of indigenous forms of worship? - Yours, etc.,
Tirellan,
Galway.