Madonna of Guadalupe 'fake'

The Vatican was thrown on to the defensive yesterday after the Virgin of Guadalupe, one of the Roman Catholic church's most powerful icons, was accused of being a con.

The attack came not from secular scholars, but the very clerics who for decades watched over the Guadalupe shrine, which draws millions of pilgrims each year.

In a letter leaked to the press, the former abbot of the basilica in Mexico City, Guillermo Schulenburg, warned Pope John Paul II not to canonise Juan Diego, a native American whose vision of the Virgin 500 years ago was decisive in converting Latin America to Christianity.

In the face of centuries of devotion, ecclesiastical research and plans to make him a saint next year, Mr Schulenburg said that Diego had never existed except as a tool to convert native Americans.

He warned that there was insufficient evidence that the vision of a dark Madonna - adopted as Mexico's patron saint - appeared on Diego's cloak in Mexico City in 1531.

Supporters of Diego's canonisation said the attack was a ludicrous and wilful attempt to deny what was a real event.

"I have spoken with many historians. I examined dozens and dozens of documents in the Vatican, in Spain, in Mexico... to contest the existence of Juan Diego is absurd," said Fidel Gonzales, of the Congregation for the Cause of Saints.

The Pope has visited the shrine, and in 1990 beatified Diego, the first step to making him a saint. Reports that he would complete the canonisation next year prompted the letter from Mr Schulenburg, 83, and two other Mexican prelates, Carlos Wanholtz and Esteban Martinez.

Margaret Hebblethwaite, a theologist and expert on the Vatican and Latin America, sided with the prelates. "I think that they are almost certainly right, historically. Making Diego a saint is just storing up trouble for the future."

Diego's dark skin and humble origins coupled with the Virgin's image on his cloak was a gift for missionaries. It gave them the blend of Christian and indigenous religious symbolism they needed to convert Latin America.

Mr Schulenburg, who guarded the shrine for 33 years, claimed three years ago that the miracle was symbolic rather than literal.

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