Image of Virgin is no miracle, scientist says
Associated Press
Monday, June 3, 2002
Jerry Lara SAN ANTONIO EXPRESS-NEWS
This 5-by-3-foot image of the Virgin Mary in a Mexico City basilica, known as Our Lady of Guadalupe, is said to have appeared miraculously on a cloak worn by the Aztec peasant Juan Diego in 1531.
SAN ANTONIO -- Two months before Pope John Paul II is scheduled to canonize the man behind Mexico's most beloved miracle, a San Antonio scientist is protesting the long-awaited event, saying an image of the Virgin Mary believed to have been imprinted on a peasant's cloak is not miraculous at all.
The olive-skinned Virgin Mary known as Our Lady of Guadalupe reportedly appeared to an Aztec peasant in 1531 and turned millions of polytheist Indians into Roman Catholics. Her 5 1/2-by-3 1/2 foot image, which is said to have appeared miraculously on the cloak worn by the peasant Juan Diego, is housed at Mexico City's Basilica of Our Lady of Guadalupe, the world's second most popular Catholic site after the Vatican.
In 1990, the pope beatified Juan Diego, the step before full sainthood, and some Catholics have been hoping for centuries for canonization, the ultimate stamp of legitimacy.
But recent studies of the image are feeding centuries-old uncertainty over its origin, says Leoncio Garza-Valdes, 61, who in 1999 was part of a team that evaluated the cloth.
"The cloak of Our Lady of Guadalupe is not one painting but three paintings, and one is signed and dated. So this is not a miraculous image; it was created by man," Garza-Valdes said.
Garza-Valdes, whose conclusions were published last week in the Mexican magazine Proceso, believes the image of the Virgin is not of supernatural origin, and that Juan Diego is a creation of 17th-century church writings.
"We want to stop the canonization of Juan Diego," Garza-Valdes said. "The church is making a boo-boo. I am a Catholic and a Guadalupano, but I am not an apparitionist and I do not believe in Juan Diego."
Garza-Valdes, a pediatrician and microbiologist, said photographs taken of the image in the basilica vault in February 1999, using various filters that allow the passage of ultraviolet and infrared light, revealed three paintings, each painted over another.
In the earliest painting, Garza-Valdes says, the female figure was quite different, and one can see the shadowy presence of a naked baby Jesus, reclining in the Virgin's left arm.
He believes this original image was borrowed from a well-known statue in a basilica in Extremadura, Spain, which he recently inspected. And he says the initials of the artist, M.A. for Marcos Aquino, a historical figure, can be seen in the corner of the painting, next to the date: 1556.
To others, these features are so vague as to be undetectable, and Garza-Valdes could cite no other independent observer who sees them.
In photos of what the scientist calls the second and third Virgins, distinct changes to the figure's facial features are easily seen. In the final image, the eyes of the Virgin have become smaller, and her features are less Indian. And, Garza-Valdes says, her face has been moved roughly 6 inches on the canvas.
Garza-Valdes also says microscopic examination of the canvas fibers reveal it to be made of hemp, typical of 17th-century paintings and not of the Mexican agave cactus.
This conclusion corresponds with those of a church-commissioned study by Jose Sol Rosales. The Mexican expert in art restoration concluded the painting was the work of human artists, using identifiable 17th-century materials and techniques, and was not the result of a supernatural event.
"Look. This isn't the product of a miracle," Rosales said in an article published three weeks ago in Proceso. "You can identify the various layers (of paint). It has the marks of the paintbrush. But they say it was imprinted miraculously, with no preparation. No, no. This is not so."
Mexican church officials say Garza-Valdes is completely mistaken. And two Americans who went with him to Mexico in 1999 to take the photos do not agree with him on critical points.
Dr. Gilberto Aguirre, a San Antonio optometrist and a student of the Virgin, said that because the pictures were taken through a quarter-inch acrylic screen using only ambient light, the images they reveal cannot all be trusted. He also said ultraviolet light cannot reveal subsurface features.
Lester Rosebrook, a photographer at the University of Texas Health Science Center who took the ultraviolet and infrared photos in Mexico, said Garza-Valdes sees specific things that he cannot.
"I didn't see the baby. If it was there, I think it would have been more clear," Rosebrook said.
Monsignor Jose Luis Guerrero, a Mexican priest chosen by the Vatican as the advocate in Juan Diego's canonization cause, said that, ultimately, there is no way to prove the picture is not of supernatural origin.
"When God changed the water to wine and made the fish and bread multiply, they seemed to be the same ordinary bread and wine," he said. "Even though they were miraculous, they appeared similar to ordinary things."
Guerrero said Vatican officials already have reviewed Garza-Valdes' book, and nothing has undermined the church's conviction about Juan Diego and the cloak bearing the image of the Virgin.
"There have been many attacks," he said. "This is just one more."
