Cardinal Cupich to lead pilgrimage to Guadalupe shrine in Mexico

Catholics from the Archdiocese of Chicago are invited to join Cardinal Cupich on a seven-day pilgrimage to Mexico City and to the Basilica of Our Lady of Guadalupe in January 2025.

The pilgrimage is a response to the invitation of Cardinal Carlos Aguiar-Retes, archbishop of Mexico City, who last June visited the Shrine of Our Lady of Guadalupe in Des Plaines on the occasion of its 10th anniversary and formally renewed an agreement of cooperation between the shrine in suburban Chicago and the shrine at the Basilica of Our Lady of Guadalupe in Mexico City.

“Cardinal Aguiar-Retes took the opportunity to personally invite Cardinal Cupich to make a pilgrimage to the Shrine of Our Lady of Guadalupe and the Archdiocese of Mexico City,” said Father Esequiel Sanchez, rector of the Shrine of Our Lady of Guadalupe.

Sanchez and Father Manuel Dorantes, pastor of St. Mary of the Lake Parish, will be spiritual guides for the Jan. 14-20, 2025, pilgrimage, which includes devotions and opportunities to learn about the history of the Catholic Church in Mexico, especially the theology of the apparitions of Our Lady of Guadalupe to St. Juan Diego on and around Tepeyac Hill in December 1531.

“Our Lady of Guadalupe, her message is so universal,” Sanchez said. “Her message is evangelization. She comes to give all her love, all her help and protection, in a very difficult time.”

Our Lady of Guadalupe brings people together, he said, something that is very needed now, when communities are deeply divided.

Our Lady appeared to Juan Diego for the first time at dawn Dec. 9, 1531, on Tepeyac Hill and said she wanted a church built in her honor on that hill. St. Juan Diego went to the bishop to share this news, but was put off by the prelate. She appeared again, and the saint — who was called by name by the apparition — again approached the bishop. The bishop asked for a sign, and Mary produced enough roses in December to fill the saint’s cloak or “tilma.”

When he emptied the roses in front of the bishop, he found that Our Lady had left her image on the tilma, which remains today in the Basilica of Our Lady of Guadalupe in Mexico City.

The former archbishop of Mexico City, Cardinal Norberto Rivera Carrera signed an agreement of cooperation with former archbishop of Chicago, Cardinal Francis George, in 1999, that included plans for a sanctuary devoted to Our Lady of Guadalupe.

Two years later, Cardinal Rivera Carrera sent a replica of the tilma to the Archdiocese of Chicago with Msgr. Luis Guerrero-Rosado, rector of the basilica in Mexico City at that time. That was when the Sanctuary of Our Lady of Guadalupe in Des Plaines became a site where people could fulfill their “mandas,” or promises to the Virgin of Guadalupe, and receive the indulgences associated with this devotion.

The sanctuary was designated a shrine in 2013.

Sanchez said that to the best of his knowledge, the Des Plaines shrine is the only place outside of Mexico City where pilgrims can fulfill their mandas, although he knows that leaders of the shrine in Mexico City would like to establish other such shrines around the world.

“There are so many reasons people might not be able to travel to Mexico to do this, and it’s hard for them,” he said. “It weighs on them.”

More than 2 million people a year, from all over the United States and from other countries, visit the Shrine of Our Lady of Guadalupe in Des Plaines each year, with hundreds of thousands coming for feast day devotions on Dec. 11 and 12 alone.

That demonstrates the connection people feel to Our Lady of Guadalupe, he said.

“There’s something deep, deep in the heart of people that they’ll get up in the heart of winter, they’ll come in semi-trucks, they’ll come on horseback, they’ll carry things. They will come publicly, in groups. There is something there,” Sanchez said. “We need to listen to what that is.”

To learn more about the pilgrimage and its itinerary, visit solg.org/pilgrimage-to-mexico-city-2025.