Assignment 5A

In a paragraph, tell us what "Independence Period' means.
The Independence Period is after the Colonial Era in Latin America and is around 1810-1830 for most countries. This was when the countries gained their independence from Spain. This time period was also known as the Latin American Revolutions. After the revolutions, Haiti, Ecuador, Bolivia, Argentina, Chile, Colombia, Mexico, Paraguay, Venezuela, Peru and Brazil were recognized as independent countries in Latin American.

Tell us why you chose the topic:
I actually chose to do “The Virgin Guadalupe” first but after researching for a while and just coming up with all this other information on Juan Diego I decided to switch my research towards him. The reason why I chose the Lady was that I had always heard about her and know many people who were necklaces and bracelets that are dedicated to her. I thought it would be interesting to learn what she stood for and I think that I did accomplish that in my research.

Tell us 3 interesting facts about your topic in 3 separate paragraphs:
The reason why Juan Diego is known is because of one day in his life that changed his life forever. On every site that I look at this story is pretty much the only thing they talked about. The story starts out on December 9, 1531 when Juan was walking to mass he passed Tepeyac Hill and heard heard music and saw a glowing cloud encircled by a rainbow. A woman's voice called him to the top of the hill. She said she was the Virgin Mary and asked Juan to tell the bishop to build a church on that site. The bishop was kind but skeptical so he told him to bring some proof. When Juan met up with the Lady again she told him to climb to the place where they had first met. Juan did that and was amazed to find that there were flowers growing in the frozen soil. He gathered them in his cloak and took them to the bishop. Juan told the bishop what had happened and opened his cloak. The flowers that fell to the ground were Castilian roses (which were not grown in Mexico at that time). But the bishop's eyes were not looking at the specific flowers they were on the image of the Lady imprinted inside Juan's cloak. Soon after, a church was built on the site where our Lady appeared, and thousands converted to Christianity. Lady of Guadalupe was declared the patroness of the Americas.

Another interesting fact that I found was in the middle of the story that I talked about above but I left it out because I thought it was interesting by itself. After the Bishop had told Juan to go find proof Juan got distracted from going to meet up with the Lady because his father was very ill. The Lady cut him off in his path and told him that his father was cured and that he should go back up to the place where they had first met to find his proof.

There was also some interesting things that I found about what happened to Juan Diego after the church was built. He deeply loved the Holy Eucharist, and by special permission from the Bishop he received Holy Communion three times a week, a highly unusual occurrence in those times. Also Pope John Paul II praised Juan Diego for his simple faith nourished by catechesis and pictured him as a model of humility for all of there people.

Cite your sources used for this component and tell us why these sources are credible:
http://www.catholic.org/saints/saint.php?saint_id=73

I thought that the source that I found on catholic.org was very credible. Just from looking at the website you could see it was very professional and with a link like that I couldn’t help but believe what they wrote they must believe to be true.