CATHEDRAL CELEBRATION IN HONOR OF OUR LADY OF GUADALUPE, DEC. 11
December 5, 2013  |  By:   |  Press Releases  |  

The annual celebration in honor of Our Lady of Guadalupe at the Cathedral of Our Lady of the

Angels will be held on the eve of her Feast Day, December 11. Faithful are invited to venerate the

only known relic of the Tilma of St. Juan Diego, which is enshrined in a special golden chapel inside

the Cathedral.

Veneration of the relic will begin at 6 p.m. Aztec dancers will pay homage to the Blessed Mother on

the Cathedral plaza starting at 8 p.m. At 10 p.m., the Cathedral Spanish Choir will lead a rosary

followed by a performance by Mariachi Estrellas de Mexico. At 11 p.m., special invited guest

singers (to be announced) will serenade the Virgin and sing “Las Mañanitas,” a traditional Mexican

birthday song that is sung to honor the Virgin of Guadalupe on her Feast Day. The festivities will

conclude with a midnight Mass celebrated by Archbishop José H. Gomez.

The celebration recalls the miraculous apparitions of the Virgin Mary to Saint Juan Diego at

Tepeyac, Mexico in December 1531, when she left her image on his tilma or cloak.

The Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels is home to the only relic in the United States of the Tilma

of St. Juan Diego where the Image of Our Lady of Guadalupe miraculously appeared almost 500

years ago. The relic of the Tilma of St. Juan Diego was given to the Archdiocese of Los Angeles in

1941as a gift from the Archbishop of Mexico City in appreciation and friendship after Los Angeles

Archbishop John J. Cantwell lead a pilgrimage to the Basilica of Our Lady of Guadalupe in Mexico

City. Given the natural agave fibers used to make the Tilma, experts say it is nothing short of

miraculous that the relic at the Cathedral in Los Angeles, and the rest of the Tilma

in Mexico City, have survived for almost five centuries. The cloth should have disintegrated hundreds of years ago.

The Cathedral Celebration in honor of Our Lady of Guadalupe is co-presented by the Knights of

Columbus, the world’s largest Catholic fraternal organization. The Knights of Columbus’ devotion to

Our Lady of Guadalupe reached a milestone with the chartering of their first Mexican council as the

“Guadalupe Council” in Mexico City in 1905. Since then, the Knights have done much to spread Our

Lady’s message, including co-sponsoring a U.S. tour of the Archdiocese’s tilma relic in 2003. The

Knights also held their first-ever International Marian Congress on the Feast Day of Our Lady of

Guadalupe in 2009, which concluded with the 22,000-person Guadalupe Festival in Phoenix,

Arizona. Last year, Knights presented a special Guadalupe Celebration with more than 80,000

faithful in attendance at the historic Los Angeles Coliseum. Founded in 1882 by Venerable Father

Michael McGivney in New Haven, Conn., the Knights of Columbus has grown to over 1.8 million

members and 14,000 councils in more than a dozen countries worldwide.

For more information regarding the Cathedral Guadalupe Celebration visit archla.org/guadalupe

 

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