Father Mike Schmitz

She looked Aztec.

She looked native, essentially.

And she asked him to go to the bishop to ask the bishop to build a cathedral, a church in honor of the Lord.

And he went to the bishop.

The bishop said, yeah, I need proof.

Basically, here's a short story.

Juan Diego went back to the woman.

the young woman.

And she said, okay, well, she pointed out some flowers and that was the middle of December there in Mexico in the mountains.

And so flowers shouldn't be growing there.

And so there was these flowers that went full bloom, Castilian flowers, Castilian roses, in fact.

And so he took off his tilma, which is like a poncho made out of like dried reeds.

So it's really fragile, but probably new is fine.

And she arranged these flowers on them, gave it back to him.

He wrapped them up or she wrapped them up, gave them back to him.

And he presented the bishop, like, here's the proof, the flowers.

And he unfolds this tilma and

the bishop not only looks at the flowers and says, okay, this is incredible, Castilian roses in the middle of December in Mexico, but also on that tilma was an image of the woman, the image of the young maiden, Arlene Guadalupe.

And that image has endured to this day.

There's no scientific way that it's even possible to have this image imprinted on this tilma.