During his upcoming trip to Mexico, Pope Francis has asked that he be allowed to take a short break from his hectic schedule to have a few minutes alone with the tilma of Our Lady of Guadalupe in Mexico City.

“Sometimes I am afraid of certain problems or something unpleasant happens and I do not know how to react, and I pray to her,” he said in a videotaped interview with Mexican news agency Notimex this week. “I like to repeat to myself, ‘Do not be afraid, am I not here, your Mother?’ They are her words: ‘Do not be afraid.’”

As Aleteia is reporting, this will be Francis’ third trip to Mexico, but his first as Pope. His apostolic trip will begin on February 12 and take him to Mexico City, Ecatepec, Tuxtla Gutierrez, San Crostobal de Las Casas, Morelia, and Ciudad Juarez before he returns to Rome on the 17th.

As he did on previous journeys, he will make it a point to visit the miraculous image of Our Lady that appeared on the cloak of St. Juan Diego in December of 1531. The image was a sign from Our Lady that she wanted a church built on the site of her apparitions to the indigenous peasant. It is now the site of the Basilica of Our Lady of Guadalupe and is where the tilma, which should have disintegrated within a few years, has survived for nearly 500 years.

Juan Diego was canonized in 2002 by St. John Paul who pronounced Our Lady of Guadalupe to be the Patroness of All America.

Pope Francis has had a long-standing devotion to the apparitions and was in the process of building a shrine to Juan Diego in Buenos Aires when he was elected Pope.

“I feel…that she is our Mother, who cares, protects and leads a people, who leads a family, who gives the warmth of home, who caresses with tenderness and who banishes fear,” Francis said. “It is an eloquent image, that of a Mother like a blanket who covers and cares, in the midst of her people. … This is what I feel before Her.”

“What I would ask you, as a favor,” he concluded, “is that this time, the third time I will be on Mexican soil, that you will let me spend a moment before the image. That is the favor I ask of you.”

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