CANONIZING JUAN DIEGO : Mexico City politics.

Mexico City--Amid a squall of controversy, Cardinal Norberto Rivera, President Vicente Fox, and Mexico City Mayor Andres Manual Lopez Obrador are fervently praying that failing health will not prevent John Paul II from making his fifth visit to Mexico. On July 30, the pope intends to canonize Juan Diego, the humble Aztec to whom the Virgin Mary supposedly appeared in 1531. Some say Spanish invaders manipulated, even fabricated the apparition to convert native tribes to Catholicism.

Whether fact or fiction, the "Virgin of Guadalupe" powerfully fosters hope, inspiration, and devotion among the Mexican masses (see Carl Bankston's review of Mexican Phoenix, October 26, 2001). In fact, the Virgin presents one of the few symbols that unite a country of 101 million beset by ethnic, geographic, socio-economic, and political cleavages. Each year, more than 20 million pilgrims flock to the basilica constructed on the site of Juan Diego's vision. For Catholics, only the Vatican outdraws the shrine in Guadalupe, which abounds with poignant, handwritten testimonials of how the Virgin's intercession cured an alcoholic husband or saved a baby mangled in an auto accident. Canonizing Juan Diego will furnish a second magnetic icon in Latin America's most Catholic country, 21 million of whose expatriates constitute a burgeoning force within American Catholicism.

Besides lofting his star in Rome, Rivera--Mexico City's ambitious cardinal archbishop--sees the expected papal visit as an opportunity to augment the church's clout in Mexico's ever more plural political system. He would like the church to have its own TV and radio stations, according to religion expert Fred Alvarez Palafox. Like other John Paul appointees, Rivera is also fighting vigorously against abortion, artificial birth control, Protestant inroads, and indigenous activism sparked by liberation theology.

To discourage the use of Juan Diego as a tool for mobilizing Mexico's 12 million, mostly dirt-poor Indians, the church hierarchy has recast the saint-to-be's image. The young man's traditional dark complexion, slightly slanted eyes, aquiline nose, and peach-fuzz mustache have given way to lighter skin, rounder eyes, long hair, and a Jesus-like beard. Jesuit journalist Enrique Maza blasted the makeover as blatant "Europeanization," which conveys the message to Indians that "they must become Western to become Catholic."

Guillermo Schulenburg, the former abbot of the basilica, has raised a more pungent stink by questioning whether there ever was a Juan Diego. The canonization, he argued, would propagate mysticism by recognizing a superstitious "cult." In reaction to this perceived blasphemy, placards sprouted with the barb: "'Guillermo Schulenburg Doesn't Exist'--signed Juan Diego."

President Fox also pooh-poohed the doubting Thomases. A divorced and now remarried but practicing Catholic, Fox swaddled himself in the Virgin's mantle during a successful mid-2000 crusade to defeat the candidate of the long-ruling anticlerical Institutional Revolutionary Party. Fox hoisted the standard of the Virgin as his campaign banner, prayed at the basilica on the morning of his inauguration, and regularly attended Mass. Last fall, he flew to Rome for a papal audience.

Such public piety hasn't helped Fox fulfill promises to create jobs, spur development, curb street violence, reform the tax regime, and liberalize the energy sector. A medley of factors--the chief executive's inability to set priorities, his incessant travels abroad, a disdain for schmoozing with politicos, and a U.S.-incubated recession--have produced a legislative logjam. As a result, his once stratospheric approval ratings have plummeted to below 50 percent.

The telegenic, six-foot five-inch president hopes that several days of hobnobbing with the pope will improve his fortunes and enhance his ability to pressure opposition lawmakers, who are eager to clobber Fox's party in next year's congressional contests on the way to recapturing the presidency in 2006.

Mayor Lopez Obrador regards a papal visit as a godsend for his own scheme to succeed Fox. Although a big shot in the leftist, church-bashing Democratic Revolutionary Party, the populist, demagogic mayor has propitiated Cardinal Rivera. They are working together to rehabilitate the city's sixteenth-century cathedral, restore other rundown churches, and transform the crime-ridden area around the basilica in order to expand religious tourism. Their plans envision upscale hotels for the affluent, spacious dormitories for the tour-bus crowd, and construction of a Plaza Mariana, projected to be larger than Saint Peter's Square.

Photo ops with John Paul II would broaden Lopez Obrador's base, which he has built by handing out stipends to senior citizens and the disabled, scholarships to needy students, tax breaks to female breadwinners, low-cost housing to the poor, and lucrative contracts to multimillionaire businessmen.

If the mayor's prayers go unanswered, the pontiff may be forced to perform the canonization via satellite from the Vatican. Although Juan Diego still would be elevated to sainthood, Rivera, Fox, and Lopez Obrador would lose a golden opportunity to draw political strength from an increasingly debilitated John Paul II.

George W. Grayson, who teaches government at the College of William & Mary, has recently written Mexico: Changing of the Guard, published by the Foreign Policy Association in New York City.