You're listening to Catholic Sprouts, the daily podcast for Catholic kids that strives to plant seeds of faith.

Hey, Sprouts. Today is Friday, May 8th, 2020. This week on Catholic Sprouts, we have been going through everything we know about our lady of Guadalupe. We've learned about Juan Diego, about the Aztec Indians, about the way Mary asked Juan Diego to have the

archbishop built her a chapel, the amazing sign that she gave the roses, but so much more importantly,

the image that appeared on Juan Diego's Tilma.

Yesterday we talked about just a couple of the amazing facts that we continue to

learn about the image of our Lady of Guadalupe as we continue to study it with our new technology.

Now today, we are going to talk about what happened in Mexico after Mary appeared. Before Mary appeared, before that,

very few native people in what is now Mexico had converted to the Catholic faith. Very, very

few. Now, this is mostly because the Spanish people came in and they weren't very loving towards the native people.

They remembered the horrors that they had witnessed watching the Aztecs sacrifice their own people to these violent pagan gods.

And it was hard for them to get over that.

And because of that, they weren't very open and receptive. And some of them were downright violent and mean towards the native people. They oppressed them and killed them. However, when Mary appeared, dressed as an Aztec princess and appearing to be both Spanish and Aztec that spoke to the hearts of both the Spanish people

that have derived and the native people that lived there. Millions and millions of people

converted. Eight million people converted to the Catholic faith. Now, this is amazing. And there was only a very

small group of Spanish missionaries there to baptize them. Imagine with me for a minute,

lines and lines of people begging to be baptized. That is the power that this image had. It spoke directly to the

hearts of people. And Mexico has become one of the most faith-filled countries on the planet.

Even through terrible persecution, the church has survived there. Mary came and really conquered not only

Mexico, but also much of South America. Now, what's interesting is to remember what was happening

in the world elsewhere at this time. Just under 500 years ago, at the same time that Mary was appearing to Juan Diego,

terrible things were happening in Europe. Martin Luther broke with the Catholic Church.

He claimed that the Catholic Church was not the true church, and he started his own church. In fact, that church is still around today.

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