• In December of 1531, campesino Juan Diego Cuauhtlatoatzin was resting on a hilltop near Mexico City when he heard some fantastic singing, “like the songs of various precious birds.” A woman dressed in clothes “like the sun” suddenly stood before him and asked his help in convincing the local bishop to build her a shrine. Juan Diego hurried off to the church, carrying the Castilian roses she gave him as proof of her presence. When the bishop expressed skepticism, he opened his cloak to show him the roses, and lo and behold—her olive-skinned image was emblazoned on its fabric. La Virgen de Guadalupe has since become the symbol not only of Mexico’s faith, but of the very nation itself, and many indigenous and activist groups have adopted her image in their call for social justice. The famous cloak can be viewed via a moving walkway at the Basilica de Santa Maria Guadalupe in Mexico City, near the La Villa-Basilica metro station. During the weeks of the Feast of the Virgen de Guadalupe (December 12) and Easter, millions of Mexicans make pilgrimages to the Basilica, some hobbling on their knees as an act of penance.
• In May of 1917, a woman “more brilliant than the sun” appeared before three children tending their family’s sheep outside Fatima, Portugal. After revealing three secrets (including a description of hell and instructions on how to save souls from it), she asked them to pray the rosary every day, and visited on the thirteenth of the next five months to ensure they did. Word quickly spread of this vision, and thousands flocked into the fields to catch a glimpse. By August, authorities deemed the children disruptive and threw them in jail, but they refused to divulge the secrets that the Virgin passed on—even under threat of being dunked into a cauldron of boiling oil. That October, the Virgin rewarded some seventy thousand spectators with a spectacular light show in the fields that culminated with the sun doing a swan dive over the horizon amidst a torrential rainstorm. She hasn’t returned since, but hundreds of thousands still gather in Fatima every May 13 to parade her statue through town and hold a candlelight vigil at the Basilica.
• The Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception in Washington, D.C. contains some seventy chapels, oratories, and images honoring the Madonna, many donated by religious orders from around the world. “When I sit here, I feel connected to women who lived centuries ago, and who will come centuries later,” says motivational speaker Aliana Apodaca of El Paso, Texas. “It is a mystical place that honors the feminine. Whenever I am in D.C., I take a cab here to just sit and meditate for a while.” Located at 400 Michigan Avenue in the northeast part of the city, the Basilica—the Western hemisphere’s largest—can be reached via the Brookland-CUA metro station.