LOS ANGELES (OSV News) — In a new pastoral letter, Archbishop José H. Gomez of Los Angeles calls on Catholics to prepare for the 500th anniversary of the apparitions of Our Lady of Guadalupe in 2031 as a time of spiritual renewal and a new missionary awakening in the Americas.
Titled “The Wonder of America,” the archbishop’s letter is a sweeping, often personal 20,000-word reflection on what the apparitions mean historically for the Christian mission in the Americas and for the spiritual lives of believers today.
Central to the letter is Archbishop Gomez’s belief that the Guadalupe apparitions represent “the true origin story for the United States and the nations of the Americas.”
“Guadalupe holds the key to understanding God’s original intentions for these continents. Five hundred years later, it also holds the key for discerning the Church’s continued mission here,” writes Archbishop Gomez in the letter.
The new letter is dated on the feast of the Nativity of the Blessed Virgin Mary, Sept. 8, 2026. It was released on Oct. 22, the feast day of St. John Paul II, the first pope to visit the Basilica of Our Lady of Guadalupe in Mexico City.
St. John Paul II went to Basilica of Our Lady of Guadalupe 4 times
The pontiff went four times; the first visit was 1979, when he entrusted his papal ministry and Latin American evangelization to the Virgin of Guadalupe, and he returned in 1990, 1999 and 2002.
The title of Archbishop Gomez’s pastoral is drawn from the words of the 18th-century Mexican painter Don Miguel Cabrera, who after an exhaustive study of the Guadalupe tilma described it as the “Maravilla Americana” (“The Wonder of America”) and concluded the image was a “divine portrait” made “by a brush entirely of heaven.”
“The Wonder of America” is Archbishop Gomez’s third pastoral letter since arriving in Los Angeles in 2010: In 2012, he wrote “Witness to the New World of Faith” on his vision for evangelization, and in 2017, “For Greater Things You Were Born,” on the challenges to human dignity in modern culture.
The archbishop believes the coming 500th anniversary offers “many graces and spiritual opportunities” for Catholics. Rather than a time to commemorate an event from the past, he sees it as an invitation to renew the mission that began at Guadalupe nearly five centuries ago.
“We are approaching two great anniversaries,” he writes, “in 2031, the Jubilee of Our Lady of Guadalupe; and in 2033, the Extraordinary Jubilee marking 2,000 years since the death and resurrection of Our Lord.”
“The hour to live our faith with attentive hearts”
Now, Archbishop Gomez writes, “is the hour to live our faith with attentive hearts, with new seriousness and new joy; to go deeper in prayer and study, to grow in our knowledge and love for Jesus and His mother; and to embrace more fully our responsibility to spread the faith and bring others to Jesus.”
“Now is also the hour for a new commitment to the continental mission, to the evangelization of the Americas, beginning in our own country.”
The mission entrusted to St. Juan Diego by the Virgin Mary on Tepeyac Hill, the archbishop writes, is the same one given to Christians in today’s own “new world” marked by the modern-day industrial revolution brought on by rapid technological advances.
“St. Juan Diego’s obedience helped change the course of history,” writes Archbishop Gomez. “By living out our vocation and mission with the same faith and courage, each of us can help change the world again. Our Lady of Guadalupe speaks now to each of us, as she spoke to him: ‘Go and do what you are responsible for doing!'”
The letter also details episodes from Archbishop Gomez’s life in which “Our Lady’s hand” guided his life and vocation: summer pilgrimages as a child with his parents to the shrine in Mexico City; working on a film crew documenting a visit by St. Josemaría Escrivá to the Guadalupe basilica for a novena; and a fateful experience involving Guadalupe as a young bishop in Denver.
Serving as Denver auxiliary when named San Antonio archbishop
He was an auxiliary bishop for Denver from 2001 until December 2004 when St. John Paul named him archbishop of San Antonio. He recalls attending a Christmas party where guests were invited to take a present from a basket on a table. He chose “a little image” of Our Lady of Guadalupe and put it in his pocket. The next morning he received a phone call from the papal nuncio about his new appointment.
“As the years pass, more and more I can see that throughout my life, Our Lady of Guadalupe has been there, holding me in the tenderness of her maternal heart, guiding me with her gentle hand,” he writes.
The letter invites Catholics to read the Guadalupe story through the Nican Mopohua, a 16th-century Nahuatl text considered the earliest and most important account of the Guadalupe story. Archbishop Gomez considers the Virgin Mary’s role in salvation history, as well as the lessons to be learned from figures such as Juan Diego and Bishop Juan de Zumárraga, the Franciscan bishop at the center of the Guadalupe drama.
While acknowledging the often brutal practices of the Spanish conquest in Mexico and the New World, Archbishop Gomez points to the holiness and heroism of the missionary priests and bishops who defended the rights of Indigenous peoples and “helped lay the foundations for modern international law and our belief in universal human rights.”
Hope anniversary of apparitions ‘will mark a new beginning’
“Sadly, the missionary period remains a largely unknown — and too often distorted — chapter in the history of Catholic social doctrine,” writes the archbishop. “But I pray that this 500th anniversary will mark a new beginning and will renew our desire to return to the sources and learn from the witnesses of that first generation.”
The letter also underlines Our Lady of Guadalupe’s historical spiritual bond with the city of Los Angeles, from the devotion of the city’s 18th-century founders, to the Guadalupano traditions brought by refugees of the Mexican government’s persecution of the Church in the 1920s and 1930s, to her ubiquitous presence in LA street art today.
In one passage near the end of the letter, Archbishop Gomez presents a kind of “litany” of the American saints, blesseds and venerables, citing them as the “fruits of holiness” born from the Guadalupe miracle.
“Their lives testify that Our Lady of Guadalupe has never abandoned her children in the Americas. The mission begun at Tepeyac is not finished. And now their witness passes to us.”
Pablo Kay is the editor-in-chief of Angelus, the news outlet of the Archdiocese of Los Angeles. This story ran first in Angelus and is distributed in partnership with OSV News.
