Who was Juan Diego? (Odds & Ends).

Did Pope John Paul II canonize a real person or an imaginative story when he raised Juan Diego to sainthood? This past July the aging and ailing pope, after hanging out with some of the world's Catholic youth in Toronto, traveled to Mexico to canonize Juan Diego. It's hard to keep exact count, but this appears to be the 461st person proclaimed a saint by this present bishop of Rome. John Paul II has canonized more people in his close to quarter-century pontificate than the combined efforts of his immediate 33 papal predecessors. This pope loves naming saints.

Is this pope's penchant for canonization deja vu not all over again but in reverse? Back in the late 1960s the church cleaned its overly sainted house quite thoroughly. Many saints, some famous, many obscure, were dropped from the calendar of saints because there was not enough historical basis either to their lives or to some of the incidents attributed to them, or because they lacked universal significance. Saint Christopher was the most recognized casualty; Saints Trypho and Modestus were among the lesser-known expulsions.

The impetus for revising the church calendar came from the Second Vatican Council's Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy. According to the late Father Clement J. McNaspy, S.J., the revision stressed "saints whose lives are sharply discernible and proposed as prototypical of goodness, and those who have something to say to the world at large."

Does the now sainted Juan Diego fit the bill? His story dates back to a decade after the conquistador Hernando Cortez defeated the mighty Aztec Empire. In December 1531 Diego had visions of Mary at Tepeyac, a one-time sanctuary of Tonanzin, an Aztec goddess. The Blessed Mother told him to go to the bishop, Juan Zumarraga, and request a church be built there in her honor. The doubtful bishop requested Diego produce proof of his vision. During a subsequent vision, Diego gathered flowers that were then arranged on his cloak by Mary. She sent him back to the bishop. When Diego opened his cloak before Zumarraga, the bishop saw an imprint of the virgin on Diego's cloak. He deemed the vision real and built the church.

Some who believe this story is not historical trace its origins to an era of Mexican Catholicism more than a hundred years later when overly zealous missionaries might well have created it as a dramatic evangelical weapon to use against the pagan Aztec culture. Such skeptics believe the cloak that holds the image of Our Lady of Guadalupe to be the work of a skilled artist, much as critics of the Shroud of Turin maintain.

Nonetheless, Our Lady of Guadalupe re mains a central figure in the faith and love of Mexican people everywhere. And devotion to this particular manifestation of the Mother of God transcends its specific Mexican heritage. Many Catholic churches across the United States reverence Our Lady of Guadalupe with her likeness. The pope believes he canonized a person. Others--such as authors David A. Brading (Mexican Phoenix, Cambridge University Press) and Father Stafford Poole (Our Lady of Guadalupe, University of Arizona Press)--believe he canonized a story.

Might Juan Diego, as well as some other saints from the throngs canonized during the reign of John Paul II, be targets for removal from the church's calendar at some future date by a directive of a future council? Time, and perhaps even history, will tell.

PETER GILMOUR ([e-mail]) teaches at the Institute of Pastoral Studies of Loyola University Chicago.