Knights of Columbus Plan Congress, Festival in Honor of Our Lady of Guadalupe

(PHOENIX, AZ) – The Knights of Columbus will hold its First International Marian Congress on Our Lady of Guadalupe from August 6-8, 2009, following the organization’s 127th annual convention in Phoenix.

The Congress will conclude with a Guadalupe Festival at Jobing.com Arena on August 8. Nearly 20,000 attendees are expected from throughout the Southwestern United Sates and Northern Mexico.

Co-sponsored by the Knights of Columbus, the Diocese of Phoenix, the Archdiocese of Mexico City and the Center for Guadalupan Studies, the Congress will be held at the JW Marriott Desert Ridge Resort and will feature talks by experts from throughout United States and Latin America on Our Lady of Guadalupe.

“The centrality of Our Lady of Guadalupe to the Americas as ‘the Christian Hemisphere’ is clearly evident throughout North and South America,” said Supreme Knight Carl Anderson, who will speak both at the Marian Congress and at the Guadalupe Festival. “Her message today is one that has as much importance and meaning today as it did nearly 500 years ago.”

Our Lady of Guadalupe is honored as the Empress of the Americas and devotion to her is widespread throughout the hemisphere, and in a particular way in Mexico and the Southwestern United States.

The lectures will focus on the meaning of the message, some of the scientifically inexplicable aspects of the image, and the relevance of Our Lady of Guadalupe in today’s world. Speakers include Dr. Jose Aste Tonsmann from Peru, who has done extensive studies of the reflections in the image’s eyes; Rev. Msgr. Eduardo Chavez, who oversaw the cause for canonization of St. Juan Diego – the Indian to whom Our Lady of Guadalupe appeared in December 1531; and other experts on key elements of Our Lady of Guadalupe and her message.

The Guadalupe Festival will feature an afternoon of music, prayer and inspiration speeches by notables including actor Eduardo Verastegui, best-selling author Imaculee Ilibagiza, Cardinal Norberto Rivera Carrera of Mexico City and Bishop Thomas Olmsted of Phoenix. Performers at the festival will include Irish singer Dana, a mariachi band and matachina dancers.

The most important event in the evangelization of the New World occurred in December, 1531. Over the course of four days, the Virgin Mary appeared to an Indian named Juan Diego. As a result of this encounter, and the image miraculously imprinted by Our Lady on Juan Diego’s tilma (or cloak), millions of Native Americans embraced the Catholic faith and the Americas began to be transformed into “the Catholic hemisphere.”

The First International Marian Congress on Our Lady of Guadalupe, and its Guadalupe Festival, are a celebration of that great, hemisphere-changing event. The Festival will feature speakers and performers from around the Americas and around the world. The celebration will include music, Indian dancing, the Rosary, inspirational speeches, and a presentation on the history, meaning and importance of the appearance of Our Lady of Guadalupe to St. Juan Diego.

The Guadalupe event is the encounter between God and man through Christ’s Mother, Our Lady of Guadalupe, who, from December 9th through 12th, 1531, appeared to the humble Indian Juan Diego Cuauhtlatoatzin. To Juan Diego she delivered her message and image, full of love for the Catholic Church and, from her, to the whole world. It is the great example of perfectly grass-roots evangelization, as Pope John Paul II called it.

Go To: http://www.guadalupefestival.org/gf/en/index.html