Science before the mystery of the Virgin of Guadalupe
Patron of Mexico. Her feast is celebrated on December 12.
The miracle of the Virgin of Guadalupe
The apparition began on December 9, 1531 in the vicinity of Mexico City, then the capital city of the Aztec empire: the Virgin appears to the Indian Juan Diego, and asks him to convey to the bishop of the place his will that it be built a temple dedicated to Ella on the Tepeyac hill. The bishop, listening to the story of the Indian, asks him for proof of the presence of the Mother of God there. María then makes a garden of roses grow on an inhospitable and semi-desert hill, and she makes Juan Diego collect them in her tilma (a kind of poncho or blanket). She then asks him to present them as proof of her Presence to the bishop. When the Indian opens his tilma in front of the bishop, the flowers fall to the floor and the image of the Virgin Mary appears miraculously portrayed on the rustic cloth. The temple dedicated to the Virgin of Guadalupe was built on the Tepeyac hill, place of the apparitions, where the original tilma of Juan Diego is exhibited, printed with the world-famous image of the Virgin of Guadalupe.
Pius X proclaimed Our Lady of Guadalupe “Patron of all Latin America”. Pius XI, of “all the Americas”; Pius XII called her “Empress of the Americas”; and Juan XXIII, “The celestial missionary of the New World” and “the Mother of the Americas”. In the marvelous great basilica of Guadalupe, John Paul II beatified the Indian Juan Diego on May 6, 1990. In addition, in his four visits to Mexico, John Paul II visited Tepeyac and honored the Virgin of Guadalupe with profound filial love, to whom he entrusted the American continent and its new evangelization.
Surprising curiosities about the tilma of Guadalupe
Ophthalmological studies carried out on María’s eyes have detected that when light is brought closer to them, the pupil contracts, and when the light is removed, it dilates again, just as it happens in a living eye. Maria’s eyes are alive on the tilma! It is also discovered that the eyes possess all three image refraction effects that a human eye normally possesses. Achieving these effects with a brush is absolutely impossible, even today.
The magüey fiber that constitutes the fabric of the image cannot, under normal conditions, last more than 20 or 30 years. In fact, a replica of the image was painted several centuries ago on a similar maguey fiber cloth, and it disintegrated after several decades. Meanwhile, almost five hundred years after the miracle, the image of Mary remains as strong as the first day. Scientific studies have been carried out on this fact, without being able to discover the origin of the incorruptibility of the fabric.
No trace of paint has been discovered on the fabric. In fact, when approaching less than 10 centimeters from the image, only the raw maguey fabric can be seen. The colors disappear. Scientific studies of various kinds fail to discover the origin of the coloration that forms the image, nor the way in which it was painted. No traces of brush strokes or any other known painting technique are detected. Dr. Phillip S. Callaghan, from the American NASA scientific team, biophysicist from the University of Kansas (USA), researcher, scientist and painting technician, and Professor Jody Brant Smith, «Master of Arts», of the University of Miami, Professor of Philosophy of Science at the University of Pensacolla, affirmed that the material that originates the colors is not any of the known elements on earth. In their book “La tilma de Juan Diego” they expose the study carried out by them at a private level.
Several times, throughout the centuries, men have painted additions to the fabric. Miraculously, these aggregates have disappeared, leaving the original design again, with its bright colors.
In 1791, muriatic acid was accidentally spilled on the upper right side of the canvas. Within 30 days, without any treatment, the damaged tissue is miraculously reconstituted. Currently this fact is barely noticed as a brief discoloration in that place, which testifies to what happened.
The stars visible in the Mantle of Mary respond to the exact configuration and position that the Mexican sky had on the day the miracle occurred, according to astronomical studies carried out on the image.
On November 14, 1921, Luciano Pérez, a Spanish anarchist, placed a flower arrangement next to Juan Diego’s Tilma that contained a high-powered bomb. The explosion destroyed everything around it, except for the cloak, which remained in a perfect state of preservation. A heavy metal cross that was nearby was completely bent by the explosion, and is kept as a testimony in the temple. However, the glass that protected the Tilma did not break, considering that at that time there were no bulletproof glass.
Dr. Enrique Graue, an internationally renowned ophthalmologist, director of an ophthalmological hospital in Mexico, states: “I examined the eyes with a high-power ophthalmoscope, and I could see the depth of the eye in them as if I were seeing a living eye.”
In these eyes, the Púrkinje-Sánsom effect appears: the image is tripled on the cornea and on both sides of the lens. This effect was studied by Dr. Púrkinje of Breslau and Sánsom of Paris, and in ophthalmology it is known as the Púrkinje-Sánsom phenomenon. This phenomenon, exclusive to the living eye, was also observed in the eye of the Virgin of Guadalupe, by Dr. Rafael Torija with the help of an ophthalmoscope. He certifies it with these words: «The eyes of the Virgin of Guadalupe give the impression of vitality».
Doctors Guillermo Silva Ribera, Ismael Ugalde, Jaime Palacio, etc. affirm the same thing. Since 1950, the eyes of the Virgin of Guadalupe have been examined by twenty ophthalmologists.
Conclusions of a study based on digital technology
Digital technology sheds new light on one of the phenomena that is still unknown to science: the mystery of the eyes of the Virgin of Guadalupe. The results of this research were revealed by engineer José Aste Tonsman, from the Center for Guadalupan Studies of Mexico, at the “Regina Apostolorum” Pontifical Athenaeum in Rome.
Dr. Aste, a graduate in environmental systems engineering from Cornell University, has studied for more than twenty years the printed image of the Virgin on the coarse fabric made from maguey fibers -a kind of cactus- of the tilma of Blessed Juan Diego, the indigenous who received the apparitions that decisively changed the history of Mexico. It is a fabric that does not last more than twenty years, but the image remains intact as the first day for almost five centuries, after having remained for more than a century on a damp wall, between the smoke of thousands of candles, and groped by crowds of Indians.
In his conference, Dr. Aste insisted that we are facing an image “that has not been painted by the hand of man.” Already in the 18th century, several scientists carried out scientific tests that showed how it was impossible to paint such an image on a fabric of such texture. Richard Jun, Nobel laureate in Chemistry – recalled Dr. Aste Tonsman -, made chemical analyzes in which it was found that the image does not have natural dyes, or animals, much less minerals. Since synthetic dyes did not exist at that time, the image, in this regard, is inexplicable.
In 1979, the Americans Philip Callahan and Jody B. Smith studied the image with infrared rays and discovered to their surprise that there was no trace of paint and that the fabric had not been treated with any type of technique.
Aste wonders: “How is it possible to explain this image and its consistency over time without colors and with a fabric that has not been treated? Furthermore, how is it possible that, despite the absence of paint, the colors remain its luminosity and brilliance?
The Peruvian engineer added that “Callahan and Smith have shown how the image changes color slightly depending on the viewing angle, a phenomenon known as iridescence, a technique that cannot be reproduced with human hands.”
But, in particular, this prestigious scientist investigated the enigma of the eyes. The reflection transmitted by the eyes of the Virgin of Guadalupe, is the scene in which Juan Diego showed the bishop Fray Juan de Zumárraga and those present in the room, the mantle with the mysterious image on December 9, 1531. He began to develop his study in 1979. He enlarged the irises of the Virgin’s eyes to a scale 2,500 times larger than life size and, through mathematical and optical procedures, managed to identify twelve characters imprinted on the Virgin’s eyes.
In the eyes of the Virgin -he reveals- the witnesses of the Guadalupe miracle are reflected, the moment in which Juan Diego showed the ayate to the bishop. The Virgin’s eyes thus have the reflection that would have been imprinted in the eyes of any person in that position.
A seated Indian can be distinguished, looking up; the profile of an old man, with a white beard and a balding head, like the portrait of Juan de Zumárraga made by Miguel Cabrera to represent the miracle; a younger man, most likely the interpreter Juan González; a strong-featured Indian with a beard and moustache, opening his own cloak before the bishop, no doubt Juan Diego; a dark-faced woman, a black servant who was in the bishop’s service; a man with Spanish features who looks pensively stroking his beard with his hand. In short, in the eyes of the image of the Virgin of Guadalupe there is printed a kind of snapshot of what happened at the moment the miracle took place.
In the center of the pupils, moreover, on a much smaller scale, another scene can be seen, totally independent of the first. It is an indigenous family made up of a woman, a man and some children. In the right eye, there are other people standing behind the woman.
This is as far as science goes, was the conclusion of Aste Tönsmann. How something so wonderful has been done is not possible to decipher with scientific methods. The Peruvian researcher, however, ventures to offer a reason: he considers that in the eyes of the Virgin there is a “hidden” message reserved for our time in which technology is capable of discovering it, and when this message is most necessary. . “This may be the case with the image of the family at the center of the Virgin’s eye, at a time when the family is under serious attack in our modern world”. A message, moreover, universal and anti-racist, since several ethnic groups are reflected.
The text of the study comes from the magazine Ave María, nº 667
The movie
In Mexico, the film “Guadalupe” was released on November 30, 2006. The Cardinal and Archbishop Primate of Mexico, Norberto Rivera Carrera, recommended the film because “it makes available to the public the knowledge of multiple and unknown aspects of Santa María de Guadalupe, within the framework of 475…