MEXICO CITY, NOV. 13, 2001 (Zenit.org).- John Paul II might canonize Juan Diego in Mexico on his return from Toronto´s World Youth Day next July, the Argentine news agency AICA reported Monday.
Juan Diego is the Indian who witnessed the apparitions of the Virgin of Guadalupe in 1531.
During his Oct. 18 visit to the Vatican, Mexican President Vicente Fox invited the Holy Father to visit his country after World Youth Day in Canada.
According to the Mexican press, Javier Moctezuma Barragán, the undersecretary for Population, Migration and Religious Affairs, said a papal visit to Mexico was possible.
Moctezuma revealed that President Fox himself extended an official invitation to the Pope, and that the decision now depends on the Holy Father. The undersecretary also said Mexico has the necessary infrastructure and security, «as it did in the past,» to organize another papal visit.
John Paul II last visited Mexico in January 1999, when he gave the postsynodal exhortation «Ecclesia in America» in the Basilica of Guadalupe.
