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Braving the December cold in Chicago every year, thousands of people walk miles in a pilgrimage to pay homage to Our Lady of Guadalupe, a Mexican icon of Catholicism who is celebrated on Dec. 12 at a shrine in Des Plaines.
Some walk barefoot, and others carry heavy statues of La Morenita, as they call the beloved representation of Jesus’ mother. There’s also a race, a group of people who bike, hundreds of equestrians and a procession of semitrucks.
Some do it to thank the mother of God for her divine intervention, and attribute miracles to her. For many more, the procession signifies a sacrifice they must make — una manda — after a pledge to visit Our Lady of Guadalupe was made in exchange for an urgent request made in prayer. Often, circumstances make a trip to her shrine in the basilica in Mexico City impossible, so they make a pilgrimage to Des Plaines instead, said the Rev. Esequiel Sanchez, rector of the Shrine of Our Lady of Guadalupe.
Ricardo Alanis and his wife, Guadalupe Alanis, said it was a miracle Our Lady of Guadalupe granted them that solidified their faith and in 2000 led them to organize a pilgrimage from Chicago to the shrine, 1170 N. River Road in Des Plaines, after they migrated from Michoacan, Mexico.
“She saved my wife’s and my youngest daughter’s lives,” Ricardo Alanis said.
While living in Michoacan, Guadalupe Alanis said she was told to abort their younger daughter because it was a high-risk pregnancy. However, the couple refused and instead prayed.
Their daughter, Maria Guadalupe Alanis, named after the Virgin Mary, is now 33, and she has made the pilgrimage by foot with her father several times.
Pilgrimages like the one the Alanis family organizes show the devotion people have to Our Lady of Guadalupe, Sanchez said.
“That extreme expression of sacrifice reveals the extreme need that they feel and the strong devotion that our people have,” said Sanchez, who has seen the number of pilgrims and processions for the Feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe grow each year since he became rector in 2016.
Our Lady of Guadalupe, he said, represents power and access to God to Catholics all over the world.
“She is no longer just a Mexican icon,” he said.
She is known as the Mother of the Americas and in 1999, Pope John Paul II reaffirmed her role as the patroness of the Americas and added her feast to the Catholic calendar throughout the Americas.
Those who have a devotion to Our Lady of Guadalupe are known as guadalupanos.
“It’s impossible to describe the level of faith and sentiment that the pilgrims feel as they walk to the shrine, and even harder to express the feeling of hope, happiness and gratitude that is felt when they arrive at the shrine amid music and thousands of flowers,” Sanchez said.
In recent years, more than 200,000 devotees have attended the celebration throughout the night of Dec. 11 and into Dec. 12, according to the Des Plaines Police Department. There are at least 20 pilgrimages and processions to Cerrito de Tepeyac in Chicago registered this year. Each one departs from a different church in Chicago and includes some devotees who come from neighboring states to join with the local pilgrims, helping to make this the largest celebration for the Feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe after Mexico City’s, Sanchez said.
Many more participate but don’t register and don’t follow set pilgrimage routes. Over the years, the feast has become ubiquitous in the Archdiocese of Chicago, and there are now hundreds of special Masses with “Las Mañanitas” — a song to commemorate her first apparition — at midnight or 5 a.m. in churches throughout the metro area, said Alejandro Castillo, a spokesman for the archdiocese.
This year, organizers expect the same, though it all depends on the weather, Sanchez said.
“There was a year where almost 400,000 people visited the shrine” for the Dec. 12 feast, he said.
The numbers demonstrate the significant population of Latinos and, specifically, the presence of those who can’t travel to her shrine in Mexico because of their immigration status, health or economic problems, Sanchez said.
“The shrine here and the ability to make these pilgrimages (in the streets of Chicago) as they did in their hometowns in Mexico represents hope and makes them feel closer to her,” Castillo said.
It is estimated that 50% of the Catholics in the Chicago Archdiocese are Latinos, and more than a third of the parishes have “some (type of) Hispanic ministry,” Castillo said.
The shrine in Des Plaines houses the first replica of the sacred tilma — cloak — with the image of Our Lady of Guadalupe and the icon’s elaborate frame sent to an international destination and created by artisans working with the Basilica of Our Lady of Guadalupe in 1996.
The basilica houses the original cloak on which it is believed that the image of the Virgin Mary appeared before peasant Juan Diego in December 1531 on that same hill where her shrine now stands. Before it was brought to the Chicago area, the Des Plaines icon was touched to the original image and blessed at the basilica by the church’s then-rector.
Aside from the homages paid on Dec. 12, there are hundreds of pilgrimages and processions and more than a million visitors from all over the United States throughout the year, Sanchez said. It is the most visited shrine of Our Lady of Guadalupe in the United States, although there are other churches that also house officially sanctioned images from the basilica.
“For many people, it may all seem like superstition and foreign, but we’re talking about people who are comfortable with the promise of Christianity, and the biggest icon of that is Our Lady of Guadalupe,” he said.
During the pilgrimage walks, some wear several layers of clothing to protect themselves from the cold, while others wear traditional Mexican clothing that represents their indigenous communities. There are also Aztec dancers, mariachi and sometimes banda, Mexican folk bands.
Hundreds bring her roses — like the ones on Juan Diego’s tilma — and many more give her bouquets of assorted flowers. Amid candles, there are also milagros — items that the devotees take her and leave in the shrine or nearby “as a reminder of that which they’re praying for,” Sanchez said.
A few years after putting down roots in Chicago, Ricardo Alanis felt the need to honor Our Lady of Guadalupe on her day “because I have countless blessings and miracles to thank her” for, he said.
There was no local procession in his area, so on a December night in 1999, he asked his brother and one of his cousins to walk with him from Our Lady of Lourdes Church, 4640 N. Ashland Ave., to Des Plaines to estimate the amount of time it would take to get there.
The following year, he led the first-ever pilgrimage from Chicago to the shrine in Des Plaines. It was roughly 60 people, Alanis recalled. The procession now has more than 1,000 attendees, making it the largest and longest-running pilgrimage to Des Plaines on Dec. 12, said Ignacio Perez, spokesman for the shrine. Every year, on Dec. 11, devotees gather in front of Our Lady of Lourdes Church around 7:30 p.m. to begin the pilgrimage by foot at 10 p.m., arriving in Des Plaines at roughly 5 a.m.
Instilled with great faith by his mother’s example, Alanis first took the pilgrimage to the Shrine of Our Lady of Guadalupe from his hometown in Michoacan to Mexico City in his early 20s. He then made the five-day pilgrimage every year for almost 20 years, he recalled.
“Many people have lost faith or don’t know of faith until they experience a pilgrimage or the celebration on Dec. 12 in her shrine,” said Guadalupe Alanis. “Our goal is to ensure that people don’t stop believing in Our Lady of Guadalupe, in Jesus and God. Miracles happen.”
Their prayers, they believe, also cured Guadalupe Alanis of lymphoma in 2011 and allowed Ricardo to continue walking and organizing the pilgrimage despite having his knees replaced a few years ago. The couple have also witnessed hundreds of people fulfilling their pledges to the Virgin Mary through the pilgrimage they organize and have heard thousands of testimonies of faith, they said.
Despite the growth in the number of attendees, Alanis said that he has never acquired any sort of permits from the city of Chicago. Instead, he has sought donations from pilgrims to rent portable bathrooms and the trailer to carry them, and to make sure there is enough money to pay a banda to sing a few songs for La Morenita, he said.
Most years, there are enough donations to cover the cost of it all, almost $2,000. Other times, he pays the expenses himself.
Sanchez said that it is testimonies like the Alanises’ that keep the faith and the tradition of the processions and pilgrimages alive and growing in the Chicago area.
“For non-guadalupanos, it’s difficult to interpret these processions and why people make those sacrifices of walking for miles in the middle of winter, but it’s better not to judge and listen to what they’re doing: They’re trying to negotiate their lives via that exercise,” Sanchez said.
