Cardinal Norberto Rivera Carrera highlighted this fact in his homily Sunday in the metropolitan cathedral.
He was in Rome recently to take part in the plenary meeting of the Pontifical Commission for Latin America. In an audience with participants of that meeting, the Pope mentioned his July visit to Mexico when he canonized Juan Diego and beatified the Oaxaca martyrs.
“Ever since I went on pilgrimage for the first time to the splendid Shrine of Guadalupe on Jan. 29, 1979, she has guided my steps in these almost 25 years of service as Bishop of Rome and universal pastor of the Church,” the Holy Father told the participants last Thursday.
“I wish to invoke her, the sure way to encounter Christ, and who was the first evangelizer of America, as the ‘Star of Evangelization,’ entrusting to her the ecclesial work of all her sons and daughters of America,” he added.
