This year marks the 475th anniversary of the apparitions of Our Lady of Guadalupe to St. Juan Diego, and the 75th anniversary celebration procession in the Archdiocese of Los Angeles.

Angelenos will celebrate with an outdoor procession Dec. 3, beginning at noon at Our Lady of Solitude (La Soledad) Church, East Los Angeles, and ending with and Mass at East Los Angeles College Stadium, Monterey Park.

Concelebrating the liturgy with Cardinal Roger Mahony will be Msgr. Diego Monroy Ponce, rector of the Basilica de Santa Maria de Guadalupe in Mexico City. Prior to making a special trip to Los Angeles to bring a "Peregrina" (Pilgrim) image of Our Lady of Guadalupe, the priest spoke with Vida Nueva, the archdiocese's Spanish-language newspaper. Following are excerpts from the original interview in Spanish.

Q: Why is a Pilgrim Virgin significant for this Los Angeles celebration?
Msgr. Monroy: Because with this jubilee year, the Virgin (through an exact replica of the original image) leaves her temple in Tepeyac to journey to Los Angeles to be with the needy and bring them an evangelizing and encouraging message.

She is Our Lady who always goes to where the needy are. She is Our Lady who came to earth to be with us, like she said to St. Juan Diego: "to listen to our lamentations, our grief, our suffering and heal us of all our difficulties."

It is for this fundamental message from the Virgin that the images of Our Pilgrim Lady and St. Juan Diego will head the procession in Los Angeles that has as its theme "Mother of All Immigrants."

There is no doubt that Our Lord and Our Lady of Guadalupe are providential, because she has to be there (in Los Angeles) where there is opposition in these moments, and where our Hispanic brothers and sisters need to be lifted up in these moments of so much repudiation against immigrants.

For this reason the Pilgrim Virgin will be among those devoted to her, to bring them a message of communion, fraternity and solidarity.

We can't forget what Pope John Paul II said in his apostolic exhortation The Church in America: "The appearance of Mary to the native Juan Diego on the hill of Tepeyac in 1531 had a decisive effect on evangelization. Its influence greatly overflows the boundaries of Mexico, spreading to the whole Continent. America, which historically has been, and still is, a melting-pot of peoples, has recognized in the mestiza face of the Virgin of Tepeyac, in Blessed Mary of Guadalupe, an impressive example of a perfectly inculturated evangelization.

"Consequently, not only in Central and South America, but in North America as well, the Virgin of Guadalupe is venerated as Queen of all America."

Q: What do you think of the fact that Our Lady of Guadalupe is considered in this city as the Mother of All Immigrants?
|Msgr. Monroy: I think it is logical that she is there to animate and lift up all the immigrant brothers and sisters. For this reason she has stayed among us and for this reason she told St. Juan Diego very clearly in one of her apparitions: "That nothing may scare you, that nothing may preoccupy you…Am I not here I who am your Mother?"

This is the message people are internalizing and understanding among all the immigrants who are taking her as their Mother. And she has become the most global Marian devotion in these moments.

The Our Lady of Guadalupe Dec. 3 procession begins at noon at Our Lady of Solitude (La Soledad) Church, 4561 Cesar Chavez Ave., and ends at East Los Angeles College Stadium, 1301 Cesar Chavez Ave., Monterey Park, where the multi-ethnic, multi-lingual Mass begins at 1:30 p.m. For more information, call Resurrection Church at (323) 268-1141.